- United Airlines on Thursday became the second U.S. airline to resume Boeing 737 Max flights.
- The first flight flew from Denver to Houston in the first step to rebuild consumer confidence.
- United plans to initially fly the plane from bases in Denver and Houston across the US.
- Visit the Insider Business Department for more stories.
United Airlines flew the Boeing 737 Max again on Thursday after a 23-month outage that began in March 2019 when the aircraft was grounded worldwide.
The first flight departs from Denver International Airport with just under 170 passengers, including United chief operating officer Jonathan Roitman, in the first step toward restoring consumer confidence for an aircraft family that killed 346 passengers. In total, Thursday departed 24, just six less than the same day in 2019, one month before the plane’s grounding.
United follows American Airlines – which started flying the Max in December 2020 – as the second American airline to return the Max to passenger service. By the end of March, as more planes arrive from Boeing, United will use the Max for as many as 98 daily flights from bases in Denver and Houston, Cirium data show.
The Federal Aviation Administration decommissioned the aircraft in November 2020 after dismantling the software and systems of the aircraft that caused the two accidents. United pilots now also receive four hours of simulator training and three hours of computer-based training specifically for the aircraft before boarding the cockpit, a requirement that was not applicable during the initial debut of the aircraft.
Read more: The 16 Most Outrageous Things Boeing Employees Said About the Company, the 737 Max Program, and Each Other in Released Internal Email
According to Bryan Quiqley, senior vice president of flight operations, Thursday’s flight was the culmination of more than 1,300 test flights and 400,000 hours of engineering hours. And with the plane going from the most infamous to the safest in the air, Insider was on board the first flight to see the end result.
Here’s what it was like to fly on a newly unmanned United Airlines Boeing 737 Max.