According to Reuters news wire, Ethiopian Airlines, Africa’s largest airline, will resume services of the controversial Boeing 737 MAX after nearly three years of suspended operations with the aircraft.
As of February 1, 2022, the Ethiopian airline will reactivate its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX 8s, of which it owns four, and 27 are pending delivery. As of March 2019, the airline suspended all its 737 MAX operations following the fatal event of flight ET302 where 157 passengers and crew died.
“We have taken enough time to monitor the design modification work and the more than 20 months of rigorous rectification process. our pilots, engineers, aircraft technicians, cabin crew are confident in the safety of the fleet” said Tewolde Gebremariam, CEO of Ethiopian Airlines.
“It is in line with this guiding premise that we will now return the Boeing 737 MAX to service not only after recertification by the FAA, Europe’s EASA, Transport Canada, CAAC, ECAA, and other regular bodies but also after the return to service of more than 34 airlines around the world,” the executive added.
Boeing has to reimburse around USD 1.8 billion to reimburse 737 MAX customers after the grounding of all aircraft. According to Bloomberg’s, sources, Tewolde commented in September that Ethiopian Airlines had reached a separate agreement with the U.S. aircraft manufacturer.
Several other countries have already put the model back into service in the skies, with China recently becoming the latest to approve the commercial resumption of the 737 MAX, with Malaysia and India, among others, also joining the move in previous months.
