The American aviation giant Boeing has identified a new software issue with its widely used 737 MAX passenger aircraft, as its management acknowledged yesterday, Saturday.
The problem could potentially leave pilots without autopilot assistance in a specific landing scenario, following an aborted landing attempt, the company explained.
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He assured that pilots are trained to handle such situations using established procedures, adding that it is preparing a software update to permanently fix the problem.
It is unclear how many of the more than 2,000 737 MAX aircraft delivered to airlines to date are experiencing this problem.
The software for this particular aircraft model plunged Boeing into the most serious crisis in its history, after two brand-new aircraft crashed in October 2018 and March 2019, resulting in the loss of 346 lives.
The cause of these tragedies was the MCAS, a piece of software inspired by Boeing’s military applications, installed without the pilots’ knowledge and designed to help pilots avoid a loss of lift — but it intervened too aggressively under certain circumstances and relied on data from a single sensor, which could freeze above a certain altitude. The pilots of the two fatal flights were unable to disable it in time. Due to the malfunction—which Boeing ultimately acknowledged—the company was forced to ground all aircraft of that model for an extended period.
The 737 MAX faced other problems as well. In January 2024, a door and part of the fuselage detached from a nearly brand-new aircraft during the climb phase after takeoff in the U.S., raising doubts about quality control procedures.
Source: APE-MP
