United Airlines is canceling 45 flights a day due to Boeing’s ill-fated 737 Max planes
United Airlines’ fleet of Boeing 737 Max planes will remain grounded until November 3, ensuring that more than 8,000 flights will be canceled. That’s 45 flights per day this month, a number that’s expected to rise to 95 per day in October, per the Associated Press.
Reached for comment, a representative for the airline told Fast Company, “For more than 90 years, the safety of our customers and employees at United has come first, which is why we have cooperated fully with the FAA’s independent review of the Max aircraft, and we won’t put our customers and employees on that plane until regulators make their own independent assessment that it is safe to do so.”
Two Max planes went down in fatal crashes in the past year, killing 346 people and causing a worldwide grounding of the model. Black box data from the two accidents suggests that a system meant to prevent the planes from stalling malfunctioned. Boeing is scrambling to correct a host of issues and update its Max planes as the world’s biggest airlines continue to strike them from their schedules.
Since the crashes, the plane maker has faced accusations that it sacrificed quality in the name of cheap labor after outsourcing its software development and testing jobs to temporary engineers, who earned $9 an hour. The U.S. Justice Department has launched a probe of the company, and some analysts believe that Boeing’s plague of problems mean the Max planes won’t see the skies again before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Boeing’s 737 project manager is planning to retire after just one year in the post, according to CNBC. The turbulence is apparently taking its toll.
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