The commercial jetliner has had a rough rollout into service….
American Airlines is the first carrier to fly it again with passengers….
Boeing’s troubled 737 Max plane returned to American skies on Tuesday, carrying paying passengers in the United States for the first time in almost two years.
Those passengers were aboard American Airlines Flight 718, which left Miami around 10:30 a.m. The plane is scheduled to land in New York at 1:30 p.m., before making the return trip on Tuesday afternoon, ending a long and difficult chapter for Boeing.
The Max was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after 346 people were killed in a pair of crashes, separated by months, in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The accidents and revelations about the plane’s shortcomings damaged the company’s reputation and cost it tens of billions of dollars in damages, government fines and lost orders.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which has been criticized by lawmakers and safety experts for doing a poor job in certifying the Max in the first place, last month became the first major regulator to lift its grounding order, requiring Boeing and the airlines that use the Max to make certain changes to the plane before it could fly again….
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