EU väntas ge klartecken för Boeings olycksplan i januari

In March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes, Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019. Ethiopian Airlines immediately grounded its remaining MAX fleet. On March 11, the Civil Aviation Administration of China ordered the first nationwide grounding, followed by most other aviation authorities in quick succession. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) publicly affirmed the airworthiness of the airplane on March 11, but grounded it on March 13 after receiving evidence of accident similarities. All 387 aircraft, which served 8,600 flights per week for 59 airlines, were barred from service by March 18, 2019. In November 2018, Boeing revealed the MAX had a new automated flight control, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), that could repeatedly push the airplane nose down. Boeing had omitted any mention of the system in the aircraft manuals. A week after the first accident, Boeing and the FAA sent airlines urgent messages emphasizing a procedure to recover from a malfunction. In a presentation to the FAA, Boeing deflected blame and continued to assert that appropriate crew action would save the aircraft. Before the second accident, the FAA anticipated that Boeing would deliver a software update to MCAS by April 2019.During the groundings, the U.S. Congress, Transportation Department, FBI and ad hoc panels investigated the FAA certification of the MAX. The Indonesian NTSC accident report faulted aircraft certification, maintenance, and flight crew actions. The Ethiopian ECAA determined that the flight crew had attempted the recovery procedure. The U.S. NTSB said Boeing failed to assess the consequences of MCAS failure and made incorrect assumptions about flight crew response. The U.S. Inspector General said Boeing deliberately misrepresented MCAS to avoid scrutiny. The FAA revoked Boeing's authority to issue airworthiness certificates for individual MAX airplanes and imposed a fine on Boeing for exerting "undue pressure" on its designated aircraft inspectors. The House of Representatives faulted engineering flaws, mismanagement, cover-up, and oversight lapses rooting from the FAA's delegation of authority to Boeing.In January 2020, with 400 aircraft awaiting certification and delivery, Boeing suspended production of the MAX until May 2020. By March 2020, the grounding had cost Boeing $18.6 billion in compensation to airlines and victims' families, lost business, and legal fees. Airlines and leasing companies that once struggled without the MAX had cancelled nearly 800 orders of the MAX by September 2020, months into the COVID-19 pandemic. On July 1, Boeing completed several days of certification flights. In August, the FAA published details of changes related to aircraft defects and pilot training to be mandated before the MAX returns to service. On November 18, 2020, the FAA cleared the MAX to return to service, ending a 20 month flight ban, the longest ever for a U.S. airliner.