Introduction
A narrow body aircraft designed and developed by Boeing Commercial Airplanes and successor of Boeing 737. The spirit of Renton was name given to the first Boeing 737-MAX. On January 29, 2016 it made its first flight. The two fatal crashed of this aircraft one in October 2018 and another in March 2019 made these aircrafts grounded till further notice. Even the United States Department of Transportation started an audit on the aircraft's certification that was in 2017.
With the launch of Airbus A320neo the Journey of Boeing 737-MAX development started.
Development
December 1, 2010 was the game changer day as Airbus company launched the new series of narrow body aircrafts which was Airbus A320 neo. The increasing orders of these new aircrafts forced Boeing to develop a new aircraft which was named as Boeing 737-MAX.
Board of directors of Boeing approved the launch 737-MAX on August 30, 2011. When you have a competition in the market you try to do better then them and Boeing did the same as the fuel consumption of 737-MAX was 4% lower then that of A320neo.
First 737-MAX fuselage assembly was completed in August 2015. On January 29, 2016 this aircraft took its first flight from Renton Municipal Airport. 737-MAX got its certification after 2000 hours of test flight hours.
Delivery
Malindo Air a subsidiary of Lion Air was the first airline to get delivery of Boeing 737-Max on May 16, 2017. May 22, 2017 was the day when the aircraft entered the service. and As on April 1 2019 the company had around 5007 orders for these airplanes.
Accidents
Two accidents changes the faith of people and airline companies in this aircraft.
1. Lion Air Flight 610 (October 29, 2018) : 737 MAX-8 with registration PK-LQP take off from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Jakarta, Indonesia and Its destination was Depati Amir Airport, Pangkal Pinang, Indonesia. It was a domestion flight. There were 189 people on board. Right after 13 minutes of takeoff the flight lunged into the Java sea.
All passengers and crew members lost there lives. The impact was so powerful that the mortal remains of the on board people were floating over the sea.
Same aircraft experienced some fault in flight control system the day before the accident which was taken in control by disabling the flight control system. The accident is still under investigation.
2. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (March 10, 2019) : 737 MAX with registration ET-AVJ takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and was travelling to Nairobi, Kenya. It was carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew members. After 6 minutes from takeoff this aircraft crashed and killed all people on board.
There were lot of similarities between the crash causes of this aircraft and Lion Air Flight 610. These similarities were the main cause of world wide grounding of Boeing 737 MAX.
Boeing admitted that Boeing 737 MAX simulator failed to reproduce the flight conditions and has flaws which resulted on the crashes. This was admitted on May 18, 2019.
