Ethiopian Airlines said this week that it will resume B737-8 flights in July 2021 after analyzing the changes in the Boeing crash, all 157 people.
At the online CAPA meeting on February 9, CEO Tewolde GebreMariam said that in a harmonious manner, Ethiopian Airlines will hold orders for the new MAX before obtaining a “friendly agreement” for compensation from Boeing.
“We conducted a thorough analysis on technology, operations and business, and decided to continue using the aircraft”. “We followed up with our experts, technicians and pilots, and they seem to be pleased that these changes will completely solve the problematic flight control system”.
This is almost a change from Tewolde’s highly cited statement last year, which stated that Ethiopian Airlines will be “the last airline to fly after trying, testing and trusting MAX.” Lion Air Flight 610 crashed fatally in Indonesia in October 2018 and then in March 2019.
This is also the first sign that Ethiopia and Boeing may have reached an agreement on accident compensation. Last month, the airline’s American lawyers advised them not to accept Boeing’s offer, but to sue the manufacturer for criminal damages in the United States, saying that the offer at the time was “seriously insufficient” for the airline’s profit. United States court.
At the end of last year, the US regulator allowed MAX to continue its passenger flights, ending nearly two years of supervision. Earlier this year, Boeing and the U.S. Department of Justice reached a $2 billion deal to resolve a criminal investigation. The focus of the investigation was that during the former MAX’s flight control system-maneuver function certification period, two MAX’s How former employees misled FAA training experts. Accidental activation of the enhanced system (MCAS) caused two crashes. Among them, only US$243.6 million (less than 10%) were fines for criminal activities paid to the US government. The rest includes an additional $500 million in compensation for the families of 346 people killed in the two accidents.
At the same time, some airlines in the United States and South America have resumed the use of MAX flights, and European aviation safety regulators approved the resumption of use of the aircraft last month.
Tward said that changing the aircraft type is not economically feasible because the airline is already using an older B737 variant.