Boeing chairman, president and chief executive Dennis Muilenburg has released an open letter reinforcing the company’s commitment to safety, as most of the global fleet of Boeing 737 Max aircraft enters its second week of groundings.

We’ve been working in full cooperation with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation and the National Transportation Safety Board on all issues relating to both the Lion Air and the Ethiopian Airlines accidents since the Lion Air accident occurred in October last year,” says Muilenburg.

In his letter, Muilenberg also reiterated that a software update and related pilot training for the Max will be released soon, which “will address concerns discovered in the aftermath of the Lion Air Flight 610 accident.

UK civil aviation regulators have announced that they will establish their own airline blacklist under contingency plans drawn up should the UK crash out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement.

This list would be set up on the date of the UK’s exit from the EU – currently set for 29 March – and will “mirror” the European Commission’s current blacklist.

Unlike the European Commission’s blacklist, the UK’s equivalent would not be contained in legislation because “it does not itself impose the bans but reflects bans that have been imposed by the exercise of statutory powers”.

Data retrieved from the recently crashed Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 shows "clear similarities" with the October 2018 crash of a Lion Air aircraft, according to the Ethiopian transport minister The recorder is "in a good condition that enabled us to extract almost all the data inside", the ministry added.

The flight data recorders were shipped in recent days to France for review. Investigators have said the Lion Air jetliner crashed after the pilots were unable to arrest a descent initiated by software new to the 737 Max, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).