Ethiopian Airlines has announced that it plans to put its Boeing’s 737 Max back to service for the first time since the aircraft model was involved in a crash that claimed 157 lives three years ago. Chrystal Zhang has studied the business models of airlines. We asked her to make sense of the source of Ethiopian Airlines’ confidence.
When, and why was Boeing’s 737 Max grounded?
By 12 March 2019, two days after Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed, civil aviation authorities in China, Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Malaysia, Mongolia, Oman and Singapore had already grounded the 737 Max.
This was in addition to airlines in Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Norway, India, Turkey and other countries. On March 13, 2019, the US Federal Aviation Administration grounded the entire 737 Max fleet.
The decision was made following the fatal crash of Ethiopian Airlines’ 302 flight enroute from Addis Ababa to Nairobi. The accident killed all 157 passengers and crew members on board.
This wasn’t the Boeing 737 Max aircraft’s first incident.
On 29 October 2018 there was a fatal crash of a flight operated by Lion Air, an Indonesian low-cost carrier. The airline was enroute from Jarkata to Pangka Pinang and the crash resulted in 189 casualties.
Two years earlier, in March 2017, the US Federal Aviation Administration had granted an amended-type certificate to Boeing for the 737-8 aircraft, the first of the 737 Max family. An amended type certificate approves modification, and how such modification affects the original design. The Max is the fourth generation of the 737 model airplane, and is the successor to the company’s 737 Next Generation family of aircraft.
The 737 Max was the 12th derivative model of the 737 aircraft, which was first certified half a century earlier in 1967. Two months after the US Federal Aviation certification, the first 737 Max entered revenue passenger service with Malindo Air, a Malaysian air carrier. Seventeen months later…
