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The US Federal Aviation Administration cleared the Boeing 737 Max on Wednesday to resume commercial flights in the US. a review of almost two years after the planes went ashore in 2019 in the wake of two fatal crashes.
“The road that got us to this point was long and exhausting, but we said from the beginning that we would take the time to get it right,” FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a video message. “I am 100% comfortable with my family flying in it.” A former commercial pilot, Dickson flew a Max aircraft on a test flight in September.
The 737 Max had been on the ground around the world since March 2019, following two crashes, the first of which occurred in Indonesia in October 2018, in which 346 people were killed. Boeing says it has since fixed the MCAS flight control system that was blamed for both accidents and has taken steps to improve its focus on safety and quality.
While the FAA rescinded its order that grounded the 737 Max, the planes will not immediately return to the sky. The agency has yet to approve the pilot training review for each US airline that operates the Max, and airlines must update the planes, including installing software upgrades, before they can return to service.
“The FAA directive is an important milestone,” Stan Deal, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a press release. “We will continue to work with regulators around the world and our customers to get the aircraft back in service around the world.”
What needs to change
As part of its announcement today, the FAA released a summary of its review process and an Airworthiness Directive outlining the design changes airlines and Boeing must make before the Max can carry passengers again. Most concern the MCAS, a unique feature of the Max family that is designed to push the nose of the aircraft down during flight when the nose is too high.
Those fixes include:
- Until now, MCAS was activated by a single angle of attack sensor on the aircraft’s fuselage. But in both crashes, faulty sensor readings triggered MCAS when it shouldn’t have. In the future, MCAS must compare data from more than one sensor.
- All aircraft must have a warning light that shows when two sensors disagree. In the Indonesian accident, a software bug meant that the light worked only if the Lion Air operator had purchased a package of equipment that Boeing was selling only as an option.
- MCAS will fire only once rather than repeatedly, another factor that contributed to both crashes.
- If MCAS is activated by mistake, flight crews will always be able to counter the movement by pulling back on the control column. In both drivers crashes fought to counter movements commanded by MCAS.
- Pilots will need more rigorous training in MCAS, including time in a Max simulator. When Max was first certified in 2017, existing 737 pilots only had to complete an hour of iPad-based training with little mention of how MCAS works.
Outside of MCAS, the FAA also identified other modifications that Boeing must make, including separating two wiring bundles that control the power control surfaces on the aircraft’s horizontal stabilizer to ensure redundancy if one of the bundles fails.
Still to come
While in the past, other aviation security agencies such as those in Canada and the European Union have closely followed the FAA’s leadership in certifications, the controversy over if the original FAA approval was rigorous enough It has led them to conduct their own reviews of the 737 Max. Until they are completed, airlines in those countries will not be able to fly the 737 Max, nor will US carriers be allowed to fly the plane in their airspace.
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Although the EU is close to completing its process, EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky told Bloomberg last month that he expects approval from his agency to come by the end of the year, both Brazil’s National Civil Aviation Agency and Transport Canada said their work is still in progress. .
“We expect this process to be completed very soon,” Canada’s Transportation Minister Marc Garneau said in a statement. “However, there will be differences between what the FAA has approved today and what Canada will require of its operators. These differences will include additional cockpit and pre-flight procedures, as well as differences in training.”
