- United Airlines became the second U.S. airline to resume Boeing 737 Max flights on Thursday.
- The first flight flew from Denver to Houston in the first leg to rebuild consumer confidence.
- United plans to fly the jet across the U.S., initially from bases in Denver and Houston.
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United Airlines resumed Boeing 737 Max flights on Thursday after a 23-month hiatus that began in March 2019, when the aircraft was landed worldwide.
The first flight left Denver International Airport with just under 170 passengers, including United’s chief operating officer, Jonathan Roitman, in the first leg to restore consumer confidence to an aircraft family that killed 346 passengers. In total, Thursday had 24 departures, just six fewer than on the same day in 2019, a month before the aircraft landed.
United follows American Airlines – which started flying Max in December 2020 – as the second airline in the United States to return Max to passenger service. In late March, with the arrival of more Boeing aircraft, United will use the Max for up to 98 daily flights from bases in Denver and Houston, Cirium data show.
The Federal Aviation Administration scrapped the aircraft in November 2020, after ordering corrections to the aircraft’s software and systems that caused the two accidents. United pilots now also receive four hours of simulator training and three hours of computer-specific training for the aircraft before boarding the cabin, a requirement that was not in effect during the aircraft’s initial debut.
Read More: The 16 most outrageous things Boeing employees have said about the company, the 737 Max program and each other in internal emails released
Thursday’s flight was the culmination of more than 1,300 test flights and 400,000 hours of engineering hours, according to Bryan Quiqley, United’s senior vice president of flight operations. And with the plane going from the most famous to the safest in the sky, the Insider was on board the first flight to see the final result.
See what it’s like to fly a newly ungrounded United Airlines Boeing 737 Max.