As The Boeing Company throttles up to reactivate their 737 Max aircraft for commercial flights, Business Live Middle East’s Alvin Thomas finds out how the company has been collaborating with carriers to keep their customers safe. 

Twenty months of development and safety scrutinization later, the Boeing 737 Max aircraft has received the necessary approvals to resume operations in select countries.

The aircraft has already taken to the skies again; this time for an exclusive media clique who experienced the re-engineered flight that was first grounded back in March 2019.

This follows the lifting of the Boeing 737 Max’s ban in the United States and Brazil.

Business Live Middle East was able to interview a spokesperson from The Boeing Company this week to avail more details on the reactivation of the flights.

Below is a short excerpt from the interview:

Business Live Middle East: Winning over passenger’s trust is key to the future of the 737 Max. How important is it to create a synergy between The Boeing Company and regional carriers to ensure the success of the aircraft?

The Boeing Company: Our support for customers flying the 737-8* and 737-9* never stopped. We continued to work with each of them to resolve any challenges or questions as they arose.

To keep all of our customers informed about the latest developments in process and status, we also set up an information-sharing program, where we would provide a full update every week. We also conducted monthly collaborative work sessions with our global community of airline partners.

As the airplanes began to transition into long-term storage, we set up a proactive approach where we regularly visually inspected every one of the stored airplanes, regardless of its location around the world. Our inspector would document their findings and share it with the airline and the larger community of partner airlines.

Whenever an airline had to ferry a stored airplane to another location, we worked alongside their team to remove the airplane from storage, reactivate it and monitor all of its systems while in-flight.

Also Read: Boeing 737 Max All Set To Fly Again – But Is It Safe?

Ultimately, more than 400 flights were conducted, generating invaluable data about the process and performance of the reactivated airplane.

For the in-service 737-8 and 737-9 fleet, Boeing will provide support in three fundamental areas. With a 24/7 dedicated operations center, we are staffing a cross-functional team that represents all of the engineering and technical areas involved with the airplane. The team will work around the clock, providing real-time solutions to any challenges a customer may face as they work to return an airplane to service and provide real-time monitoring of all 737-8 and 737-9 airplanes in flight.

Secondly, we are providing onsite support by expanding our existing field service teams with additional staff that can be deployed to help an airline complete and document every step of the comprehensive FAA-mandated process; from removing the airplanes from storage and reactivating them, to performing the FAA-mandated changes and completing the final inspection.

The third area is to ensure global parts support – we have identified the specific parts that the airlines might require when reactivating the airplane.  We have increased our stock accordingly and are deploying the parts to our regional distribution centers around the world so that they will be nearby if needed.

In addition, pilots from more than 80 of the world’s airlines including regional MAX operators have tested the enhancements made to the 737 MAX firsthand in a full-motion flight simulator. They have also reviewed the course material and technical documentation. Boeing’s pilot training proposal is currently being reviewed by regulators and includes computer-based training, simulator training and additional documentation review that are designed to provide pilots with an improved understanding of flight control systems, reinforce their technical knowledge of associated flight deck effects and operational procedures, and help restore overall confidence in the airplane.

Editor’s note: The Boeing Company has consistently referred to the “Boeing 737 Max 8” as the “Boeing 737-8” in our interview, potentially citing an unofficial change in its name while still maintaining nomenclature. This has neither been confirmed nor denied by the company.

Photos courtesy: Shutterstock