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American Airlines has scheduled its first commercial flight with the Boeing 737 MAX later this month after a prolonged grounding.
The Boeing 737 MAX will take another key step in its return to commercial travel on Wednesday with an American Airlines test flight for the media.
After being on the ground for 20 months after two fatal accidents, US aviation safety officials in mid-November cleared the MAX to return to service following changes to the aircraft and pilot training protocols.
American Airlines plans an initial commercial flight on December 29.
Wednesday’s test flight between American’s headquarters in Dallas and its maintenance center in Tulsa is aimed at bolstering public confidence in the plane.
The MAX had been a source of revenue for Boeing before the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents that together claimed 346 lives. But those calamities plunged the aerospace giant into a crisis that was exacerbated by the coronavirus and its devastating impact on commercial air travel.
Steve Dickson, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, described the aircraft’s recertification process as thorough. Dickson himself flew a test flight and said last month that he was “100% comfortable” with his family flying the jet.
A main cause of the two crashes was identified as a faulty flight management system that was supposed to prevent the plane from stopping while ascending, but instead forced the nose of the plane down. The FAA required Boeing to update this system to fix the failure.
The families of the accident victims dismissed the American Airlines flight as a “media stunt,” according to Clifford Law Offices, which represents the families in litigation against Boeing.
“The promotional flight is organized by the American Airlines marketing team simply because the company made the mistake of purchasing more MAX aircraft than almost any other airline,” said Michael Stumo, whose daughter was killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
“Passengers should avoid this plane because others are safer.”
Boeing sees more orders canceled as MAX nears return
© 2020 AFP
Citation: American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX flight aims to reassure (2020, December 2) retrieved December 2, 2020 from https://techxplore.com/news/2020-12-american-airlines-boeing-max- flight.html
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