A preliminary report into the fatal crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet last month will be released Monday, a key step toward explaining a disaster that has rocked the credibility of Boeing Co.
A media briefing will be held later in the day, said Nebiat Getachew, a spokesman for Ethiopia’s foreign ministry. Boeing has said it is reviewing the report.
The March 10 crash, the second involving a Boeing 737 Max 8 since October, triggered groundings worldwide for the aircraft and a probe into how regulators cleared the plane to fly. The initial findings may explain whether the aircraft’s anti-stall system was to blame after it malfunctioned on a doomed Lion Air flight in Indonesia five months earlier.
Preliminary data from the Max’s black-box recorder indicates that the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, known as MCAS, was pushing the plane’s nose down during the March 10 disaster, said the people, who asked not to be named because the findings aren’t yet public.
Boeing Reprograms 737 System Linked to Crashes
A software update will prevent a single sensor from activating the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System. The data from both sensors will be considered.
Boeing has spent months refining the 737 Max’s software since data from the Lion Air crash indicated the stall-avoidance system had repeatedly tipped the nose down before pilots lost control. Boeing was close to a software fix when the Ethiopian Airlines jet went down.
The MCAS was designed to keep the Max from climbing too steeply and stalling. The U.S. Transportation Department has begun an inquiry into how it was approved as part of the Max’s certification in 2017, while the Justice Department is using a grand jury to gather information.
Bloomberg