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BEIJING — The airplane that crashed on Monday in southern China was a Boeing 737-800, a mainstay of airline fleets around the globe with a robust security document.
The mannequin is a part of Boeing’s so-called Subsequent Technology line of narrow-body jets which have a most vary of over 3,000 miles, however are generally used on shorter routes.
The 737-800 is an older mannequin. Some airways have been shifting to the 737-Max, a more moderen narrow-body airplane. The 737-Max was quickly grounded worldwide after two of them crashed practically 4 years in the past.
The 737-Max was extensively criticized after one in every of them crashed in Indonesia in late 2018 and a second crashed in Ethiopia. The Max was grounded worldwide after the second crash, in March 2019. Boeing ended up making a sequence of modifications to the plane earlier than it was accepted once more for industrial service in most nations 20 months later.
China waited longer than most nations to permit the 737-Max to renew flying, nonetheless. China’s aviation regulators solely granted approval in early December, and demanded that Chinese language airways show that that they had made all of Boeing’s modifications earlier than they may really begin flying them on industrial routes once more.
Chinese language airways have made these modifications and are nonetheless testing the planes, so the 737-Max shouldn’t be but again in service in mainland China, mentioned David Yu, a finance professor specializing in aviation on the Shanghai campus of New York College.
Boeing agreed in January of final 12 months to pay over $2.5 billion in a nice to the Justice Division to resolve a felony cost that the corporate conspired to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates Boeing and evaluates its planes.
The felony cost in opposition to the corporate concerned the actions of two staff who didn’t share data with the F.A.A. about modifications made to pc software program on the 737-Max. That software program was later implicated in each crashes.
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