The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max jetliner, killing all 157 aboard, had uncanny similarities to a fatal accident in Indonesia five months earlier, raising questions about a mainstay aircraft that airlines have bought by the hundreds.
Local residents look at debris at the scene where Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed in a wheat field just outside the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa.
Boeing has received total orders for 5,000 of the twin-engine jetliners from airlines all around the world and already more than 300 are in service, increasing the urgency of finding out what happened. The plane took its first flight in October and had barely entered service in Africa by Sunday. It was on a scheduled two-hour flight to Nairobi.
“If the FAA determines it is the same problem, it is very possible that it could ground the plane,” said Douglas Moss, an instructor at USC's Viterbi Aviation Safety and Security Program, a former United Airlines captain, an attorney and a former Air Force test pilot. “I am sure the FAA would consider it.”
The Boeing software is called"maneuvering characteristics augmentation system," or MCAS. The pilots could have solved the control problem just by flipping two switches to disable the MCAS software. In a message to employees after the Lion Air crash, Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said"the 737 MAX is a safe airplane." He denied media reports that"we intentionally withheld information about airplane functionality from our customers" and said"the relevant function is described in the Flight Crew Operations Manual."
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