January 21, 2021 – The Boeing 737 Max will be approved to resume flights in Europe, following nearly two years of reviews after the aircraft was involved in two deadly crashes that saw the planes grounded worldwide.
Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, or EASA, told reporters on Tuesday that the planes will be permitted to fly so long as they meet conditions specified by the agency and that pilots are up to date on their training.
“It will be cleared to fly again from next week,” he said at an online event hosted by Germany’s Aviation Press Club.
The planes were grounded in March 2019 following the crashes of a Lion Air flight near Jakarta on Oct. 29, 2018, and an Ethiopian Airlines flight on March 10, 2019, killing a total of 346 people. Investigators determined that the cause of the crashes was a faulty computer system that pushed the plane’s nose downward in flight and couldn’t be overridden by pilots.
