New York (AFP)
The pilots of an American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX decided on Friday to shut down one of the engines of the aircraft in an emergency during a Miami-New York flight because of a "possible mechanical problem", before doing so land safely.
Flight 2555 on Boeing's flagship aircraft, grounded for nearly two years after two fatal crashes, arrived "safely and uneventfully" at Newark Airport and taxied unaided to the gate planned, said a spokesperson for the company.
It was a problem with the pressure on the engine oil or a problem with a volume indicator, according to the spokesperson.
The MCAS pilot assistance software, implicated in the Lion Air crashes in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines in 2019, was not involved, she assured.
The aircraft, from Miami, landed "after the pilots reported having turned off one of the engines in flight," said the US agency overseeing aviation, the FAA, which plans to investigate. the incident.
American Airlines was the first company to reintegrate the 737 MAX into its flight program at the end of December 2020, a few weeks after the green light from the American authorities.
The latter had required several modifications to the aircraft, in particular to the MCAS software, as well as new training for the pilots.
FAA Director Steve Dickson warned at the time that it was "inevitable" that mechanical problems or suspected problems would arise at some point and that a 737 MAX would have to return to the airport during flight, as is regularly the case with all aircraft models.
Boeing, which has set up an operations center that monitors all 737 MAX flights in real time, said on Friday it was "aware" of the incident without giving further comment.
© 2021 AFP