FAA authorizes Boeing 737 MAX to fly again.
U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Steve Dickson is “100% confident” in the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX but says the airplane maker has more to do as it works to improve its safety culture.
See also: What the return the Boeing 737 MAX will mean for passengers.
Dickson on Wednesday signed an order to allow the best-selling plane to resume flights after it was grounded worldwide in March 2019 following two crashes that killed 346 people and led to Boeing’s biggest crisis in decades.
The order will end the longest grounding in commercial aviation history and paves the way for Boeing to resume U.S. deliveries and commercial flights by the end of the year.
See also: American plans 737 Max tours to convince passengers the plane is safe.
“We’ve done everything humanly possible to make sure” these types of crashes do not happen again,” FAA Administrator Dickson told Reuters in a 30-minute telephone interview, adding the design changes “have eliminated what caused these particular accidents.”
The FAA is requiring new training to deal with a key safety system called MCAS that is faulted for the two fatal crashes as well as significant new safeguards and other software changes.
“I feel 100% confident,” said Dickson, a former airline and military pilot, who took over as FAA administration in August 2019 and took the controls for a 737 MAX test flight in September.
In a video message released on Wednesday, he said that the 20-month review was “long and grueling, but we said from the start that we would take the time necessary to get this right.”
Dickson said he emphasized to Boeing the importance of safety. “I understand they have a business to run but they don’t have anything if they don’t have a safe product,” Dickson said.
Dickson suggested Boeing has more to do to improve safety.
Boeing said it is “committed to learning from our mistakes to build a safer future so accidents like this never happen again.”
Dickson said he said expects other international regulators will “complete their work within a relatively short period of time.”
By Reuters
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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