American Airlines to scrap 115 daily flights over Boeing 737 Max

American Airlines will be cancelling about 115 flights everyday in the next few months due to the grounding of its Boeing 737 Max planes, the airline company said in an announcement on Sunday.

Currently the airline’s Boeing 737 Max planes are grounded until August 19. The global fleet of 737 Max planes have been banned from flying since March this year, after 157 people lost their lives when an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed minutes after take-off.

The freak accident was the same type of plane that had crashed in Indonesia in October which killed 189 people.

American Airlines chairman and chief executive Doug Parker said in a statement the 115 flight represent about 1.5% of the airline’s total flying each day for these few months.

He added that the company is ‘highly confident’ that the Max will be recertified prior to August 19, following the firm’s ongoing conversations with the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing.

‘Once the Max is recertified, we anticipate bringing our Max aircraft back on line as spares to supplement our operation as needed during the summer,’ he said.

Boeing fixing its 737 Max planes

Last last month, Boeing unveiled a fix to flight software system and the pilot training of its 737 Max plane, as it pledges to do all it can to prevent further accident.

The software update will make changes on the stall prevention system or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which originally was designed to automatically command a plane to go down if it senses an imminent stall.

A change to the software will include data from another angle of attack (AOA) sensor, a sensor which measures the horizontal tilt of the plane. The earlier software only included data from one of such sensor.

With the updated software, it will not create a downward pushing cycle when an abnormal reading is reflected on the AOA sensor, nor will it tilt in an angle that disallows a pilot to counteract it manually.

Boeing’s 737 Max planes represent three-fifth of the company’s production till 2032. It is an important program for Boeing in the next decade and Boeing has to prove on the reliability of the plane model before it continues to deliver its orders.