Boeing’s troubled 737 Max, grounded since April 2019 because of control issues revealed by two fatal crashes, got its first test flight with new software and other updates Monday.
The flights, with Federal Aviation Administration pilots at the controls, took off from Boeing Field near Seattle and were designed to put the plane through maneuvers similar to those that brought down planes flown by Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines. In the fatal flights, software designed to prevent a stall instead forced the plane’s nose up and caused the crash.
The long delay between grounding and first test flights resulted not only from difficulties in reworking the software and the hardware it depends on but also from the discovery of other critical errors in the plane’s design and construction that needed to be addressed. If the FAA pilots sign off on the changes, further testing will take place before re-certification.
Issues that still remain to be resolved before the plane returns to passenger service are whether regulators in other countries will go along with the FAA’s certification or will carry out tests of their own, and whether pilots, even those experienced on other 737 models, will be required to take additional training. In the past, U.S. and European regulators have deferred to each other on certification of planes, but serious questions have been raised about FAA’s going easy on Boeing.
