Aviation manufacturer Boeing on Thursday said it would take all measures to ensure the air worthiness of 737 Max aircraft, while defending the “fundamental safety” system in its planes, AFP reported.
The statement of the manufacturer follows one by Ethiopian Airlines that claimed that its pilots performed all the procedures in compliance with the manufacturer’s directions, “but were not able to control the aircraft”. Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges had called on the manufacturer to review its flight control system.
The crash left 157 people dead and prompted a grounding of the aircraft across the globe affecting more than 300 planes.
“As pilots have told us, erroneous activation of the MCAS [Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System] function can add to what is already a high workload environment,” the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement, according to Reuters. “It’s our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it and we know how to do it.”
The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, is an automated safety feature on the 737 Max 8 jets designed to prevent the plane from entering into a stall, or losing lift.
On March 18, Ethiopia’s transport minister confirmed that there were similarities between the Ethiopian Airlines plane and a Lion Air plane crash in Indonesia in October that killed 189 people.
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