Both the NTSB and France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis agreed with the Ethiopian agency's conclusion that the design of Boeing's new flight control software that repeatedly pushed the jet's nose down — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS — was a major cause of the accident.
WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - Some Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) engineers recommended grounding the Boeing (BA. N) 737 MAX in March 2019 after a second fatal crash and before the agency took action, a report released Friday said.
The ultimate Boeing 737 MAX question is always, 'is it safe now? '. The answer to that is a resounding yes. The plane has been described as one of the most scrutinized aircraft in aviation history, with authorities like the FAA, EASA, and many more taking a very close look at the plane.
Because of the sheer intensity of the scrutiny the aircraft faced, the Boeing 737 MAX could be considered one of the safest in the world. In fact, among the dozens of models of commercial airliners around the world, it is likely the safest due to the amount of regulation testing that took place.
Cost-cutting, corporate arrogance, and a new plane that was supposed to be easy to fly. An exclusive excerpt from Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing.
In a Texas federal courtroom, families of those killed in Boeing 737 MAX crashes finally have their voices heard. The airplane manufacturer was accused of fraud for misleading federal regulators about the safety of its jets, but stayed out of court by making a deal with prosecutors.
N) 737 MAX Ethiopian Airlines crash may seek compensation for pain and suffering of passengers before the plane hit the ground. Boeing in 2021 agreed to acknowledge liability for compensatory damages in lawsuits filed by families of the 157 people killed in the fatal Ethiopian 737 MAX crash.
Nearly 1,000 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are currently active across the skies.
“Repetitive and uncommanded airplane-nose-down inputs” from a new flight control system on the MAX, triggered by a single faulty sensor, put the airplane in an “unrecoverable” dive, the Ethiopian report, released Dec. 23, concludes.
The move away from the MAX name has been a subtle process and Boeing has begun to use the name 737 MAX and 737-8(7 through 10) interchangeably. This way they are transitioning away from the MAX name toward the normal naming convention of modern Boeing aircraft.
Utilizing the International Civil Aviation Organization safety occurrence data, from 2008 to 2019, these aircraft were compared in terms of occurrence type, occurrence category, phase of flight, injury level, and fatalities. It was found that Boeing had more accidents than expected, while Airbus had less (p = 0.015).
Boeing has told a US court it was not guilty of concealing information about flight control systems on its 737 Max aircraft, which led to two crashes, killing 346 people.
Boeing estimates that their 737 series aircraft have a lifespan of 90,000 flight cycles or 55,000 flight hours, whichever comes first. The 747 series aircraft have a lifespan of around 35 years or 90,000 flight hours.
Regulators around the world banned the plane in 2019 following revelations that an automated flight-control system known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, could malfunction, sending the plane into a dive, which it apparently did in both fatal crashes.
As of March 2022, there has been a total of 503 aviation accidents and incidents involving all 737 aircraft, including 219 hull losses resulting in a total of 5,717 fatalities. The 737 first entered airline service in February 1968; the 10,000th aircraft entered service in March 2018.
After both accidents, the flight-data recordings indicated that the immediate culprit was a sensor failure tied to a new and obscure control function that was unique to the 737 Max: the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).
Public. A March 2019 poll suggested that 53% of American adults would not want to fly on a 737 MAX plane if the aircraft were to be cleared by the FAA the following week. In July, Southwest Airlines reprinted aircraft safety cards that were shared between the MAX and the rest of the Southwest 737-800 fleet.
“The 737 MAX fleet has operated for 1.8 million flight hours – about 800,000 flights – since November 2020. Fleet reliability is above 99.5% - that is actually where the Next-Generation 737 was at, so it's on par with the airplane it's replaced.” Schedule reliability of 99.5% is an impressive number indeed.
Under the terms of the deal, Boeing admitted to defrauding the FAA by concealing safety problems with the 737 Max, and agreed to pay $2.5 billion in fines and compensation to airlines and relatives of the crash victims.
Virgin Australia has announced four additional Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft will join its fleet with delivery starting in the second half of 2023, increasing capacity in line with the airline's fleet growth program and journey towards Net Zero.
Boeing and its top officials have avoided criminal prosecution, however, because of the settlement reached between the company and the government in January 2021. Boeing was charged with a single count of defrauding the United States to get regulators to approve the Max jet.
The settlement allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution, and included a fine of $243.6m, compensation to airlines of $1.77bn and a $500m fund for crash victims over fraud conspiracy charges related to the plane's flawed design.
On January 7, 2021, Boeing settled to pay $1.77 billion of damages to airline customers.