On March 10 Ethiopian airlines owned Boeing 737 MAX 8, took off at 08:38 am and lost contact with air traffic controllers six minutes later. The plane crashed near Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, killing all 149 passengers and eight crew members on board. After a month of investigation Boeing admitted that a faulty sensor in its anti-stall system played a part in the deadly Ethiopian plane crash. In the same note, Boeing has also taken responsibility for the Lion Air crash of a similar nature in October that killed all 189 people on board.
According to a new statement made by Boeing on Sunday, the company discovered that a safety alert in the cockpit was not working as intended, yet it didn’t disclose that fact to airlines or federal regulators until after one of the planes crashed. The safety alert system is designed to improve the handling characteristics of the aircraft and improve stability when the nose is pitched up at a high angle. It was a new addition to the 737 Max when the aircraft was launched in 2017. Boeing learned a few months after the jets began flying, that the sensor would only work if airlines had purchased an optional safety alert, fact airlines were not aware of.
It is to remember that Boeing Max aircraft have been forbidden from flying since the Ethiopian Airlines flight crash which killed all 157 people on board. The worldwide fleet of 737 Max planes totaled 387 aircraft at the time of the grounding. Boeing announced that the grounding of their 737 MAX 8 aircraft last month has cost the company at least $1 billion so far.
