The Ethiopian company had not used a Boeing 737 MAX since the crash of flight 302 in March 2019 which killed 157 people.
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The fleet went through a “deep re-certification”. Ethiopian Airlines is due to resume flights with the Boeing 737 MAX on Tuesday, February 1. This is a first since the crash which caused the death of 157 people almost three years ago and led to the grounding of this aircraft around the world.
In March 2019, flight 302 bound for Nairobi, operated by the Ethiopian national airline, crashed in a field southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, six minutes after takeoff, due to faulty software. The accident triggered the worst crisis in the history of the American aircraft manufacturer, following another accident a few months later, that of a Lion Air aircraft in Indonesia in October 2018, which left 189 dead.
Ethiopian Airlines, the economic jewel of Africa’s second most populous country, has long said it will be the last airline to resume flights with the aircraft. In a statement sent to AFP, the carrier said the decision came after a “deep re-certification” by regulators in the United States, European Union, China and Ethiopia. Ethiopian Airlines, which had four 737 MAXs at the time of the crash, provided a list of 35 other airlines currently using the aircraft model.