First Boeing 737 Max flies in Europe after grounding order lifted

Plane is named Tenerife Alegria and has registration OO-MAX

Flying high: Boeing 737 Max belonging to Tui Fly Belgium (Tui Fly Belgium)

The first Boeing 737 Max to fly in Europe since the grounding order was removed has departed.

Tui Fly Belgium flight TB1011 took off from Brussels airport shortly before 10am local time on a two hour 15 minute flight to Malaga.

The departure came three weeks after the EU’s air safety regulator cleared the aircraft to fly.

The latest version of the world’s biggest-selling aircraft was grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes that cost 346 lives.

In October 2018, 189 people died when Lion Air flight 610 came down in the Java Sea shortly after take off from Jakarta.

The following March, 157 passengers and crew lost their lives aboard Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 after it crashed in very similar circumstances soon after departing from Addis Ababa.

Both tragedies were attributed to software known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which is intended to make the plane easier to handle in certain conditions.

In both crashes a faulty sensor caused the software to kick in repeatedly, pushing the nose of the aircraft down against the pilots’ desperate efforts to regain control.

EASA required “a package of software upgrades, electrical working rework, maintenance checks, operations manual updates and crew training which will allow the plane to fly safely in European skies after almost two years on the ground”.

The 189-seat Tui Fly Belgium jet was delivered three years ago. Since the grounding in March 2019 it has been stored on the ground at Brussels airport.

It is one of four Boeing 737 Max aircraft operated by the carrier.

The plane is named Tenerife Alegria, and it has registration OO-MAX; OO is the international code for aircraft registered in Belgium.

Two days ago it took a 75-minute proving flight, one of the conditions of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in the return to service.

After flying to Malaga, it appears the plane will “position” without passengers onboard to Alicante and operate back to Brussels later today.

South bound: the first Boeing 737 Max to carry passengers in Europe since 2019 (FlightRadar24)

The Boeing 737 Max first returned to service on domestic flights in Brazil in December 2020.

Initial reports indicated that there has been little resistance to flying on the Max.

Tui’s UK operation has a small fleet of Boeing 737 Max aircraft, based in Manchester.

But the biggest European customer for the Max is Ryanair. The airline has 210 on order, and is expected to start flying the jet from London Stansted and its home base of Dublin in May.