The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is looking set to end the 22-month flight ban on the Boeing 737 MAX this week after reviewing submissions from aviation experts and whistleblowers.
Grounded Boeing 737 Max. Credit: SounderBruce / Wikimedia
Grounded Boeing 737 MAX aircraft at Boeing Field, Seattle, Washington. Credit: SounderBruce / Wikimedia
A green light from EASA is a major stepping stone towards concluding a two-year-long safety crisis following two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, both of which were connected with a fault in the cockpit software.
Last November, the US lifted its own ban on the aircraft, followed by Brazil and Canada. China, the first country to impose a ban following the second crash, a market representing 25% of MAX sales, has not commented on its lifting on the ban.
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Provisional approval for lifting the flight ban was given in November. Since then EASA has been reviewing input from 38 commentators and “received directly a number of whistleblower reports that we thoroughly analysed and took into account,” according to Executive Director Patrick Ky.
No fresh technical problems were found during this process, he said.
Nonetheless, a French victims' group, Solidarity and Justice, said the move was "premature, inappropriate and even dangerous."
Analysts say that EASA, which represents 31 nations across Europe, has come out of the crisis stronger, which eroded trust in the leadership of US aviation safety.
The Federal Aviation Administration, EASA's US counterpart, has been accused of showing lax oversight in approving the MAX, which featuring little-documented software capable of ordering repeated dives based on only one vulnerable sensor.
EASA's approval was conditional on doing its own review of all the MAX's critical system, well beyond the faulty MCAS software.
The body also said that the causes of the accidents must be truly understood, changes in the design must be implemented and pilots must be thoroughly trained.
"We believe those four conditions are now met," said Ky.
One of the lasting impacts of the MAX safety crisis will be on the decade-old trend towards interdependence which had meant that regulators relied more on one another's judgements, under pressure to be more efficient.
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A 2011 agreement between EASA and the FAA allowed for both agencies to base their evaluation of aircraft designed in each other's territory on the testing and compliance decisions made by the other agency "to the maximum extent practicable".
“Of course given those tragedies, we have stopped this trend and we will increase our level of involvement,” Ky said, referring to EASA approval of future US-designed aircraft.
Some analysts have said that this could slow down the certification process for Boeing's upcoming 777X, which could lead the FAA to retaliate by stepping up oversight of Airbus.
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