The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave its vote of confidence saying that the Boeing 737 Max 8 was airworthy. However, as more airlines and aviation authorities grounded their planes, the FAA said in its notice on that it expects to mandate design enhancements to the automated system and signaling on board the Boeing planes by April 2019.
Boeing is planning to update training requirements and manuals along with those changes, the FAA said. Boeing confirmed that it was planning to changes to flight-control software for the planes’ MCAS system and said the changes are “designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer.”
The FAA’s notice applied to both the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and the larger MAX 9 variant.
The company confirmed it had for several months “been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer”. It did not refer to Sunday’s crash in connection to the software upgrade but did express the company’s condolences to the relatives of those killed in the disaster.
The new model of aircraft has been involved in two fatal crashes since October, and airlines using the short-haul passenger jet have been inundated with questions from concerned passengers since Sunday, when an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 crashed and all 157 people onboard died.
“External reports are drawing similarities between this accident and the Lion Air Flight 610 accident on October 29, 2018,” the FAA said in its notice. “However, this investigation has just begun and to date we have not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions.”
While it is highly unusual to have two fatal crashes of new aircraft so close together, analysts have cautioned that it is too early to know the cause of the Ethiopian Airlines crash or whether it is at all linked to the crash of the Lion Air flight last year.
Meanwhile, temporary bans on the use of Max 8 jets spread around the world. Singapore’s civil aviation authority barred their use, affecting SilkAir, an arm of Singapore Airlines that has six of the aircraft, as well as China Southern Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Shandong Airlines and Thai Lion Air. One of Brazil’s biggest airlines, GOL, grounded its seven aircraft and Aeroméxico suspended the use of its six planes.
The bans echo earlier moves by China and Indonesia as well as Cayman Airways and African carrier Comair. Argentina’s Association of Airline Pilots too has ordered its members not to fly the Max series. GOL said it had confidence in Boeing and that its Max 8 aircraft had made 2,933 flights, totalling more than 12,700 hours, “in total safety and efficiency”.
According to the FAA’s notice, Boeing is working to complete “flight control system enhancements, which provide reduced reliance on procedures associated with required pilot memory items.” The FAA also said Boeing “plans to update training requirements and flight crew manuals to go with the design change” to an automated protection system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS. The changes also include MCAS activation and angle of attack signal enhancements.
The US transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, said regulators would not hesitate to act if they found a safety issue.
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