Enlarge / A Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in October 2018; a software fix based on the investigation was delayed by the US government shutdown. It’s possible that the fix could have prevented the crash of a similar aircraft in Ethiopia on March 10, 2019. (credit: PK-REN, Jakarta, Indonesia )
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Despite two crashes within six months, a growing number of grounding orders worldwide for the Boeing 737 MAX, and a number of recent complaints from US pilots over problems with the aircraft’s automatic trim controls, the Federal Aviation Administration continues to allow the 737 MAX to fly. “The United States Federal Aviation Administration is not mandating any further action at this time, and based on the information currently available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators,” a Boeing spokesperson said in a March 12 statement.
But government inaction may have been at least partially to blame for the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX on March 10—the US government shutdown reportedly pushed back a fix to the aircraft’s software for more than a month.
On March 11, Boeing announced that the company “has been developing a flight control software enhancement for the 737 MAX, designed to make an already safe aircraft even safer.” The shutdown of non-essential operations at the FAA caused work on the fix to be suspended for five weeks, according to unnamed US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal. The fix is expected to be mandated for installation by the FAA by the end of April.
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Source: Ars Technica – Boeing’s fixes to 737 MAX software delayed by government shutdown, report claims