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American Airlines Extends Grounding of Boeing 737 Max Fleet Through September - Statement

Boeing's global fleet of 737 MAX aircraft was grounded after two 737 MAX planes crashed within six months of each other - the first in Indonesia in October 2018 and the second in Ethiopia in March 2019, killing a combined 346 people on board both airplanes.
Sputnik

American Airlines said in a statement on Sunday that it is removing its entire 737 Max fleet from its flight schedules through 3 September, later than the previously reported 19 August.

The US-based company has 24 of the planes in its fleet of more than 900 aircraft. According to the statement, a total of about 115 flights per day will be cancelled through September.

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"Our Reservations and Sales teams will continue to work closely with customers who are impacted by these cancellations", the statement read.

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In May the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hosted foreign regulators to discuss the process of clearing the 737 MAX aircraft for commercial service, but the meeting failed to produce a specific timeline.

Investigations into the deadly incidents are underway, but experts reportedly suggest the failure of the aircraft’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was the reason for the crashes.

MCAS commands automatically push down the jet’s nose in case of a critical angle of attack. However, when the information coming from sensors is incorrect, such actions by the security system may pose a danger to the plane as MCAS commands may overpower pilot attempts to pull up the nose of the jet. According to investigators, pilots of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet needed more than four minutes to realize that incorrect data from sensors urged the MCAS to push the nose down in a situation when the action was unnecessary.

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The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the global 737 MAX fleet could remain grounded for at least another two months.

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