American Airlines has recently revealed that it believes its
fleet of Boeing 737 Max jets will start flying again on January
16th, 2020 — later than initially expected.

In order for the planes to start flying again, the Federal
Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation will need
to sign off on the fixes to the problems, that caused the two
crashes that led to the deaths of 346 people.

RELATED: BOEING 737 MAX 8 LIKELY
GROUNDED FOR REST OF 2019 AFTER NEW CONCERNS
RAISED ^[1] 

Impending return to service?

Boeing claims to have resolved the issues with
the sensors that adversely affected the planes’
MCAS systems^[2].

Initial reports after the two crashes suggested that the
readings caused the plane’s systems to calculate the plane’s
position incorrectly, causing the aircraft to nosedive and
crash. 

The company claims it has fixed these problems with
expensive retrofitting. As Gizmodo^[3]
reports, United Airlines has removed the 737 Max
from its flight schedule until December 19, 2019.

In a statement to the Washington Post^[4], the airline said
that “American Airlines anticipates that the impending
software updates to the Boeing 737 Max will lead to recertification
of the aircraft later this year and resumption of commercial
service in January 2020. We are in continuous contact with the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Department of
Transportation (DOT).”

Despite this, the FAA said in the same report by
the Post that there is “not a prescribed
timeline” for the 737 Max’s return to service.

What’s more, this week, the Wall Street Journal^[5] reported
that European regulators are not satisfied with the 737
Max changes that have been cleared by the FAA.

Damning allegations

While all of the regulatory background checks have been
going on in the background, damning allegations have come out about
Boeing’s conduct leading up to the crash.

One of these surfaced recently^[6] and involved an
ethical complaint filed by an engineer at the
company. Curtis Ewbank, the senior engineer who flagged
the issues, said the following in his complaint:

“I was willing to stand up for safety and quality, but was
unable to actually have an effect in those areas. Boeing management
was more concerned with cost and schedule than safety or
quality.”

The investigation into the crashes and Boeing’s role in them
continues.