Editor's note: The video above follows an announcement by Boeing to hire hundreds of Washington workers to help maintain the grounded 737s.
Boeing's 737 MAX planes that were grounded following two crashes within less than a five months will be among the safest to fly when they return to service, a company test pilot said in a video published Thursday.
Todd White says he is encouraged by the response he's seen "across the board."
"When the MAX returns to service, any of our pilots will be honored to fly that airplane for any of our customers," he explains in the video.
Airlines around the world have canceled thousands of flights since March, when regulators grounded the Boeing 737 Max and the company suspended deliveries of new jets. Boeing says it will take a $4.9 billion charge to cover possible compensation to airlines whose Max jets remain grounded after two deadly accidents.
The plane's return has been pushed back several times, most recently after Federal Aviation Administration pilots found a new flaw while testing Boeing software changes in a flight simulator.
Boeing faces dozens of lawsuits in U.S. courts from families of the passengers killed. Families of the victims of the Oct. 29 crash of a MAX operated by Indonesia's Lion Air have agreed to consider mediation, but relatives of passengers on an Ethiopian Airlines MAX that crashed March 10 have resisted Boeing's requests, according to their lawyers.
On Tuesday, families of passengers who died in one of the crashes lobbied Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao on Tuesday to slow what they consider a rush to let the plane fly again.
Two of the relatives who took part in the two-hour meeting in Washington said Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao promised that the government will take as long as necessary to ensure that the plane is safe but stopped short of agreeing to an entirely new, top-to-bottom review.
A spokesman for Chao said the department and the Federal Aviation Administration have taken unprecedented steps to understand the accidents and the FAA's certification of the plane in 2017. One of those steps, he said, included Chao's appointment of a special committee to review the FAA's process of certifying planes.