US aviation leaders have submitted to pressure & issued a global grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft after its involvement in two fatal crashes within a six month period.
The US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) changed it tune towards the Boeing 737 MAX yesterday, citing recent data and new evidence collected at the Ethiopian Airlines crash site where all 157 people on board were killed on Sunday morning.
Although the FAA didn’t offer details into new findings, the authority noted in a statement that newly refined satellite data led to the ban.
Image: Boeing
As a result of the decision, all 371 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft around the world will remain in on the ground pending further investigation, including an analysis of Ethiopian Airlines’ flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders.
“An FAA team is in Ethiopia assisting the NTSB as parties to the investigation of the Flight 302 accident. The agency will continue to investigate.”
US Federal Aviation Authority
Having defended the Boeing 737 MAX as “a safe airplane that was designed, built and supported by skilled employees”, Boeing seemed to have reluctantly agreed to the aircraft’s grounding, saying in a statement that it was done “out of an abundance of caution”.
The aircraft manufacturer stressed that it was “supporting this proactive step” because safety is at the core of the company’s values and “always will be”.
“We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”
Boeing
The global grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX comes after several nations, including Australia, China, the UK, Malaysia and more, had suspended the aircraft from their airspace.
US President Donald Trump weighed in on the ban, describing Boeing as an “incredible company” that’s working “very hard right now” to come up with an answer for both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the Lion Air crash in October last year.
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