The first commercial flight of the troubled Boeing 737 Max jet left Miami for New York’s LaGuardia airport on Tuesday morning, almost two years after the aircraft landed worldwide.
Max was banned in March 2019 after a Lion Air accident in October 2018 in Indonesia killed 189 people and was followed five months later by an Ethiopian Airlines accident that caused the death of all 157 people on board.
American Airlines flight 718 left Miami International Airport at about 10:30 am on Tuesday. The airline plans to fly the Max from Miami to New York and return by January 4 before adding more routes.
According to CNBC, Captain Sean Roskey announced through the plane’s PA system: “We are flying in a Boeing 737 Max”, receiving some applause from passengers, which included the president, crew and other American Airlines employees. “We have the greatest confidence in this aircraft. In fact, my wife is on board, ”said Roskey.
In September, an investigative report from the House of Representatives blamed the accidents directly on Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration for their “repeated and serious failures”.
The accidents “were the horrible culmination of a series of erroneous technical assumptions by Boeing engineers, lack of transparency on the part of Boeing management and grossly insufficient supervision by the FAA,” said the Congressional report.
FAA administrator Steve Dickson, who flew the plane in September, told CNBC last month that he is “100% confident” in the recertified 737 Max.
This trust is not shared by all passengers, however. A new Reuters / Ipsos poll shows that 57 percent of Americans said they probably would not fly a Boeing 737 Max when told about the plane’s history.
Passengers on all American’s Max flights will receive advance notice, with the option to re-book, the airline said.
“Our promise to any customer flying with us is that if you board the 737 Max and don’t want to fly, we will allow you to change,” said David Seymour, chief operating officer, American Airlines. .
Boeing still faces dozens of wrongful death lawsuits by the victims’ families over the safety issues that led to the accidents. The families of the victims of the crash in Ethiopia asked regulators to suspend the planes after new revelations included in a report by the Senate Commerce Committee released on Friday found a series of shortcomings in Boeing’s recertification efforts.
“It is irritating that American Airlines is indeed rewarding Boeing for the corrupt and catastrophic lawsuit that led to Max,” said Yalena Lopez-Lewis, whose husband, Antoine Lewis, died in the Ethiopian Airlines accident.
United Airlines plans to reintroduce Max from February 11, and Southwest, the largest operator of 737 Max jets, is scheduled to start using the jet again “not before the second quarter of 2021”, according to a statement on your website.
American Airlines has ordered 76 Max jets to add to its current fleet of 24 737 Max aircraft.
“We will never forget the lives lost in the two tragic accidents that led to the decision to suspend operations,” said Boeing CEO David Calhoun in a statement in November. “These events and the lessons we have learned as a result have reshaped our company and have further focused our attention on our core values of safety, quality and integrity.”