ADDIS ABABA/SEATTLE - A preliminary
report on an Ethiopian Airlines crash will very likely
be released this week, the country's transport ministry said on
Tuesday, as Boeing prepares to brief more airlines on
software and training updates on the 737 MAX.
The aviation industry and grieving families of victims of
the March 10 crash anxiously await details from the Ethiopia-led
investigation. Boeing has come under intense scrutiny since the
crash, the second in five months involving its new 737 MAX 8
model.
The MAX software is the focus of investigations into the two
crashes -- in Ethiopia this month and in Indonesia last year --
in which 346 lives were lost.
This week Boeing is briefing airlines on software and
training updates for the MAX, with more than 200 global airline
pilots, technical experts and regulators due in Renton,
Washington, where the plane is built.
Any fixes to the MAX software must still get approval from
governments around the world. The 737 MAX is Boeing's
best-selling plane, with orders worth more than $500 billion at
list prices. Within less than a week after the Ethiopian crash,
the jets were grounded globally.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Ethiopia's Transport Ministry,
which is leading the investigation in Addis Ababa, told Reuters
that the report will very likely be released this week though he
cautioned that "there could be unpredictable things" and
declined to give further details.
The statement came a day after Ethiopian Airlines Chief
Executive Officer Tewolde Gebremariam said he expected the
preliminary report to be released this week or next week.
Tewolde told Reuters the leading African airline may or may not
attend Boeing's briefing in the United States this week.
Boeing's software fix for the grounded 737 MAX will prevent
repeated operation of an anti-stall system at the centre of
safety concerns, and deactivate it altogether if two sensors
disagree widely, two people familiar with pilot briefings told
Reuters on Monday.
Upgrading an individual 737 MAX with Boeing's new software
only takes about an hour per plane, though the overall process
could stretch on far longer as it is rolled out across the
global fleet due to stringent testing and documentation
requirements by engineers and regulators, according to a senior
FAA official with knowledge of the process.
Ethiopian and French investigators have pointed to "clear
similarities" between the two crashes, putting pressure on
Boeing and U.S. regulators to come up with an adequate fix.
(Reporting by Kumerra Gemechu and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle
Writing by Maggie Fick
Editing by Louise Heavens)