This past week, Boeing completed test flights of its troubled 737 Max airplane to demonstrate that it can fly safely with new flight control software. The Max was grounded in March 2019 after a pair of fatal crashes — in Indonesia and Ethiopia — that killed 346 people.
Even as the company began testing the planes for recertification, a federal inspector general’s report said that Boeing had kept information from federal regulators about the flawed computer system that brought down the two jets during the plane’s initial approval process.
The Max is the most recent model of Boeing’s 737, a type of aircraft with many variants over the decades. More than 10,000 737s have been built. The Max was released in 2017 in four lengths to accommodate up to 230 seats. The Max has larger, more fuel-efficient engines than the older models.
