GHOSTED

Boeing ‘Promised’ Pilots a 737 Max Software Fix Last Year—It Never Came

Vow reportedly came after last October’s Lion Air crash.

Boeing promised pilots a software fix for its 737 Max jet following the deadly Lion Air crash last October, The New York Times reports—but the update never came. The vow came at meetings between Boeing company officials and pilot unions at Southwest Airlines and American Airlines after the Lion Air accident that killed 189 people in Indonesia. The officials reportedly promised to update the software by the end of 2018. After the second 737 Max crash on Sunday in Ethiopia, United States regulators said the software update won’t be ready until April. “Boeing was going to have a software fix in the next five to six weeks,” said Michael Michaelis, the top safety official at the American Airlines pilots union. “We told them, ‘Yeah, it can’t drag out.’ And well, here we are.” The Ethiopian Airlines crash killed 157 people. The planned fix was “designed to detect the problem” with the automated 737 Max system, according to Jon Weaks, the president of Southwest’s pilot union, “and keep it from recurring.”

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