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Boeing claims that the company has resolved the problems with the automated control system that are believed to be behind the two fatal accidents involving the 737 Max 8 aircraft model.

Pilots have been trained in the changes, but the question is whether the corrections are enough to allow the model to fly again.

Hundreds of pilots and others gathered on Wednesday to participate in a review of the changes that American aircraft manufacturer Boeing has made to the accident-stricken 737 Max 8 aircraft model.

The training was held at Boeing's factory in Renton, just outside Seattle, Washington, where 12,000 employees work on, among other things, assembling the controversial 737 Max 8.

”We will do everything we can to ensure that accidents like this don’t happen again,” Mike Sinnett, Boeing’s vice president of product strategy, told reporters on site, referring to the Ethiopian Airlines crash outside Addis Ababa.

The company said it had resolved the problems with the automated control system MCAS, including by updating the plane's software. Last weekend, pilots from five airlines were informed of the changes and tested them in a flight simulator.

737 Max 8 planes have been involved in two fatal accidents within six months, the most recent of which occurred in Ethiopia on March 10. Experts have pointed to similarities between the accidents and there are theories that the MCAS system, a system designed to prevent stalling, in both cases caused the aircraft's nose to point downward despite repeated attempts by the pilots to correct the direction.

According to The New York Times Flight simulations that attempted to recreate the problems believed to have caused the suspected accident in Indonesia last year have shown that the pilot had only 40 seconds to avoid disaster.

”"Those involved in the tests (of the system) did not fully understand how powerful the system was until they flew the plane in a 737 simulator," the newspaper writes.

According to Boeing, MCAS will no longer repeatedly attempt to correct the plane if the pilot tries to regain control, and will disengage if two sensors send conflicting data. Boeing will also install a warning that tells the pilot that the two sensors are out of sync with each other.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will evaluate the measures, which will determine whether the flight ban will be lifted.

Source: TT