Ethiopia Lifts Ban on Boeing 737 Max After 2019 Crash

Chinedu  Eze

Ethiopia’s Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) has lifted the three-year ban imposed on Boeing 737 Max after the tragic crash involving the aircraft type in the country’s worst air disaster.

The Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA) said it lifted the ban after being satisfied with improvements in the planes’ design and the airlines’ pilot training programme.

The aircraft had been grounded worldwide in March 2019 when an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crashed near Addis Ababa killing 149 passengers and eight crew members on March 10, 2019. 

It was the second of two fatalities involving Boeing 737 MAX in just five months.

On October 29, 2018 Lion Air Flight 610 operating Boeing 737 MAX crashed into Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 persons on board.

Both crashes were attributed to a faulty automated flight-control system known as ‘MCAS’.

It was Ethiopia’s devastating 737 MAX crash that confirmed to the world that there was a major fatal flaw with the aircraft.

But three years later, Ethiopia and many other countries expressed satisfaction with the plane maker’s safety upgrades and the jet had returned to the skies in different parts of the world.

This was after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), the Civil Aviation Administration of China and the Transport Safety Board of Canada (TSBC), certified that the aircraft could fly in their airspace. 

FAA cleared the planes to resume flights in November 2020, but ordered mandatory pilot training and modification of flight computer.

Ethiopian Airlines had in February carried out demonstration flights with the aircraft, airlifting passengers, which include journalists and others and operated it for over one hour.

Shortly after the ill-fated crash, the former Managing Director of Ethiopian Airlines, Tewolde Gebremariam said that the airline would be the last to fly the aircraft when it returned to service.