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Lion Air Flight 610 crashed off the Indonesian coast last October, killing 189 people. Indonesian authorities believe that the failure of a sensor could have triggered an automated software designed to prevent the aircraft from taking off. However, the system may have landed the aircraft with pilots struggling to control it.
During the latest tests, the simulator pilots discovered that they had only a few seconds left to shut down the system and prevent the plane from sinking into the plane, the Times said, citing two people anonymous involved in the tests.
The system, known as MCAS, "according to the design and the explanation of origin, left little room for error," according to the report. "The people involved in the tests did not really understand the full power of the system before flying the plane on a 737 Max simulator," the Times reported.
At least some of the tests described by the Times took place over the weekend, the newspaper reported.
On Saturday, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines pilots and training officials met with Boeing officials to review the updated 737 Max aircraft software in the Seattle area, where the model is assembled, reported Monday at CNN several sources. Software updates are intended to reduce the risk of triggering the MCAS system.
The pilots flew simulated flights using current and updated software, one of the sources told CNN, adding that each flight had landed safely.
MCAS is at the center of investigations into the Lion Air disaster and the crash of a Boeing Airlines 737 Max 8 from Ethiopian Airlines on 10 March, which killed 157 people on board. Both aircraft crashed a few minutes after take-off, and in both cases the pilots reported problems a few minutes after the flight began.
According to a Reuters report, during the final minutes of the Lion Air flight, the pilots searched in a manual for a way to prevent the plane from sneaking their noses.
The Trump administration grounded all the Boeing 737 Max indefinitely three days after the crash in Ethiopia and after the rest of the world has already done so.
In a statement Sunday, Boeing called the weekend meeting a "productive session" and announced that it had invited more than 200 pilots and technicians, as well as regulators, to an organized briefing. Wednesday at the company's production center in Renton, Washington.
"This is part of our ongoing effort to share more details about our plan to support the safe return of the 737 MAX to a commercial service," said Boeing.
Update of the software requiring less intervention of the pilots
During weekend simulations with the current MCAS software, the test pilots used existing procedures to disable the system, while test flights using the new software required less cost. pilot intervention, a source told CNN.
The updated software designed by Boeing uses two sensors located on the nose of the aircraft, instead of one, and is designed not to trigger the MCAS system repeatedly, which would have stung the nose Lion Air plane so strong that pilots Attempts to regain control were futile.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), part of the effort to test the new software, declined to comment. A source familiar with the tests said the FAA should receive the software earlier this week.
The FAA should not allow dozens of 737 MAX aircraft to take off before knowing the causes of the collapse of the Ethiopian Air airport, the source said.
Flight data and voice recordings in the cockpit are being analyzed in Ethiopia, where the authorities have delivered to the US embassy officials in Addis Ababa segments of voice and data recordings. black boxes of the aircraft, told CNN Monday an informed source of the investigation.
CNN's David Shortell, Evan Perez, Gregory Wallace and Samira Jafari contributed to this report.
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