American Airlines has removed the Boeing 737 Max from its schedules through April, prompting the cancellation of thousands of flights.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based carrier has pre-emptively cancelled roughly 90 flights a day through 24 April, totalling at least 2,700 flights, as a result of the grounding, it said on 24 March.

While the FAA has not said what changes to the aircraft are needed for it to allow the Max to return to the skies, Boeing plans to release a software update developed after the Lion Air crash last October in the coming weeks. The update is expected to address issues with the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that played a role in the 2018 crash.

Icelandic carrier Wow Air’s future appears increasingly uncertain after Icelandair Group ended newly-initiated discussions with the budget airline.
Talks with Icelandair Group, had begun, on 21 March after previous potential suitor Indigo Partners pulled out of investment negotiations.
But Icelandair Group says a possible involvement in Wow’s operations “will not materialise”.

Ethiopian Airlines insists its pilots were versed in Boeing 737 Max runaway-stabilizer procedures in the wake of the Lion Air Max 8 accident last October.

It says its crews completed differences training between its previous 737s and the 737 Max before the Max 8 was introduced to the Ethiopian fleet, and that its training capabilities include access to a Max simulator.

The airline has not detailed the content of its differences training programme, nor specified the extent to which its crews have been trained on simulators for the 737 Max.

Ethiopian’s pilots have been “well-briefed” on the Lion Air accident and the directives on coping with a runaway stabilizer which emerged in the wake of the crash, the airline states.

But it claims that the full-flight simulator is “not designed” to replicate the “problems” with the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) – the enhancement introduced to the Max which automatically shifts the horizontal stabilizer to counter a high nose-up attitude.