FAA clears the Boeing 737 Max to resume flying

(Image credit: David Ryder/Getty Images)

published 18 November 2020

The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared Boeing's 737 Max to fly again.

The FAA on Wednesday cleared the 737 Max to resume flying 20 months after it was grounded in March 2019 following two plane crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people, The New York Times reports.

Investigations into the two fatal crashes blamed issues with the plane's MCAS software, which "pushed the nose down repeatedly on both planes that crashed, overcoming the pilots' struggles to regain control," The Associated Press explains. The crashes were ultimately "the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing's engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing's management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA," House Transportation Committee investigators concluded earlier this year.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

The FAA previously determined that proposed changes to the 737 Max "effectively mitigate the airplane-related safety issues that contributed" to the crashes, and Boeing has said that its "updated software makes MCAS less powerful, so a pilot can more easily regain control of the plane," The Washington Post writes. Still, the Times reports that seeing as the FAA "must still approve pilot training procedures for each U.S. airline operating the Max" and "planes need to be updated," the 737 Max may not actually begin flying U.S. passengers again for "months."

Explore More

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox