Aviation regulators from around the world will meet on Thursday to decide when the grounded Boeing 737 Max will return to the skies.
The meeting, led by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), could set out a timetable for when the aircraft can return to service.
The 737 Max was grounded in March following two crashes in five months which claimed the lives of 346 people.
Boeing has completed a software update for the jet which the FAA must approve.
The regulator said it would provide its safety analysis to delegates from 33 countries, including the UK, Europe and China, at the meeting in Texas.
The safety analysis will determine when the 737 Max can return to service in the US.
The FAA also said it “will provide safety experts to answer any questions participants have related to their respective decisions to return the fleet to service”.
Boeing has developed a software update for the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (Mcas) on the 737 Max – a new feature on the jet designed to improve the handling of the plane and to stop it pitching up at too high an angle.
Mcas has been linked to both the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March, which killed 157 passengers and crew, and the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia at the end of October, in which 189 people perished.
The FAA is expected to conduct a certification flight in the coming weeks, which, if successful, means the 737 Max could return to flight in the US during the summer.
However, the executive chairman of the International Pilot Training Association, Captain Tilmann Gabriel, told the BBC that was rather unlikely: “The FAA current acting director general has made it very clear that he is not committing to October, which was the real date [for the reintroduction], but there is so much to do.
It is also not clear when regulators outside the US in other countries will allow the plane back in the air.
China was the first country to ban the 737 Max from its skies following the Ethiopian Airlines crash. Other nations including the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the European Union soon followed suit.
