A commercial flight operated by a Boeing 737 MAX took place in China on Friday, the first since March 2019, when the plane was banned from entering the country after two plane crashes, according to flight-tracking site FlightRadar24.
The China Southern Airlines aircraft took off at noon from the city of Canton (south) to Zhengzhou (center), according to information provided by the site.
China was the first country in the world to order its airlines in March 2019 to suspend Boeing 737 MAX flights for safety reasons, following two crashes in a few months that killed 346 people. The day before the ban, a plane of this model, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa.
A longer-than-expected return to Chinese heaven
The disaster, which killed 157 people, came just over five months after another 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people. After 20 months of immobilization on the ground, the device had been authorized to fly again in the United States. Then, in most of the world, after modifications to the flight control software at the origin of the two accidents and, in particular, the training of new pilots. China had upheld its ban.
In December 2021, the Chinese regulator had officially ruled the device airworthy again, predicting it would return to Chinese skies “by the end of the year or early this year.” [2022]”, delays that were ultimately longer than expected. This ban on flights in Chinese airspace affected most companies in the Asia-Pacific region, causing great damage to the American manufacturer.
Source: BFM TV
