American Airlines Flight 718, the first American Boeing 737 MAX commercial flight since regulators lifted a 20-month basis in November, departs from Miami, Florida, on December 29, 2020.
Marco Bello | Reuters
The Boeing 737 Max could begin returning to Canadian airspace on Wednesday, officials said, reviewing nearly two years of government after the plane was involved in two fatal crashes that caused the planes to crash worldwide.
Transport Canada said Monday the planes may be allowed to fly as long as it meets the conditions specified by Transport Canada in December, including enabling pilots to eliminate a faulty warning system that was central to two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.
“Canadians and the airline industry can rest assured that Transport Canada has carefully addressed all of the safety issues before allowing this aircraft to re – serve in Canadian airspace,” Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said in a statement.
The measures go beyond those announced by the US Federal Aviation Administration in November, which requires Boeing to install the computer systems inside the aircraft and pilots to be trained in flight simulators.
The planes have been on the ground since March 2019 following the accidents of a Lion Air flight near Jakarta on October 29, 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines flight on March 10, 2019, in which a total of 346 people were killed. Investigators determined that the cause of the crashes was a faulty computer system that pushed the nose of the plane down and could not be cleared by pilots.
Boeing has admitted in court that two of its technical pilot experts misled the US FAA about a flight control system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, which can point the nose of an aircraft downward when the sensors indicate aircraft can be dangerous for an aircraft. aerodynamic stall – that it can fall from the sky.
The system was not part of previous 737 models. MCAS was added because the Max’s larger engines, mounted higher and further forward on the 737’s low sprung wings, tended to tilt the aircraft too far in certain circumstances.
Boeing underestimated the importance of MCAS and did not mention it in aircraft manuals. Most pilots did not know about it.