Boeing Confirms Customers to Have AOA Disagree Alert as Standard

(Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. said all its customers will have the angle-of-attack disagree alert as standard and have the option to include the AOA indicator at no cost.

"As we return to service, all customers will have the AOA disagree alert as standard and have the option to include the AOA indicator at no cost. This change will be made to all MAX aircraft – production and retrofit," Boeing commented in response to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

A new software update will separate the two features, making the AOA disagree alert a standalone standard feature and keeping AOA indicator as an additional customer-selected option, a Boeing spokesman said in an emailed statement. Change will be made to all MAX aircraft – production and retrofit.

Boeing didn’t tell Southwest Airlines when the carrier began flying 737 Max jets in 2017 that a standard safety feature had been deactivated, the WSJ reported earlier, citing unidentified people familiar. A Boeing spokesman told the WSJ that from now on, “customers will have the AOA disagree alerts as standard” on all Max aircraft, including those coming out of the factory and already delivered to airlines.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chakradhar Adusumilli in New York at cadusumilli@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sarah Kopit at skopit@bloomberg.net, James Ludden

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