The American agency in charge of aviation, the FAA, unveiled on Monday the list of changes it recommends to guarantee the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX, grounded since March 2019 after two fatal accidents.
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The agency, as it had already indicated in mid-July, will collect public comments on these proposals for 45 days. There will then be several steps before it gives the green light for the return to the sky of the star Boeing aircraft. The agency offers, among other things, an update of the flight control software, an update of the software generating the alerts, a review of certain procedures followed by the pilots and modifications in the installation of certain wiring. The FAA also proposes to conduct a test on the aircraft's angle of attack measurement sensors, implicated in the two crashes, and to operate a preparation flight before each aircraft returns to the sky. .
Safety issues “effectively” mitigated
The agency accompanied these suggestions with a 96-page preliminary report on lessons learned from the two accidents and actions taken by the FAA. She concluded that she had "determined that the modifications proposed by Boeing to the design of the 737 MAX, crew procedures and maintenance procedures effectively alleviated the safety issues relating to the aircraft which contributed to the accidents of Flight 610 and flight 302 ” . The FAA "further determined a priori that the proposed design changes addressed safety issues discovered after those already identified during accident investigations . "
The 737 MAX has been banned from flight since March 13, 2019 after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines model that killed 157 people. The tragedy came just months after a Lion Air MAX crashed, claiming the lives of 189 people. The aircraft recently approached a return to the sky with a series of certification flights at the end of June, but several steps still need to be taken before the aviation authorities grant their authorization, in particular on the training of pilots. The CEO of Boeing said last week that deliveries of the aircraft are expected to resume in the fourth quarter, and not in the third quarter as planned until then.
