Advertisement
Boeing has grounded its entire global fleet of 737 Max aircraft after investigators uncovered new evidence at the scene of the fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash.
The US plane-maker said it would suspend all 371 of the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration said fresh evidence as well as newly refined satellite data prompted the decision to temporarily ban the jets. The FAA had previously held out while many countries banned the aircraft. All 157 passengers and crew died in Sunday’s crash. Ethiopian Airlines said on Thursday that the black box flight recorders from the aircraft have been flown to Paris for analysis. “An Ethiopian delegation led by Accident Investigation Bureau has flown the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder to Paris, France for investigation,” the airline wrote on Twitter.What has the FAA discovered?
The FAA has a team investigating the disaster at the Ethiopian Airlines crash site working with the National Transportation Safety Board. Dan Elwell, acting administrator at the FAA, said on Wednesday: “It became clear to all parties that the track of the Ethiopian Airlines [flight] was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight.”What has Boeing said?
Boeing, the US plane manufacturer, said that it “continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max”. However, it added that after consultation with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board it had decided to ground the flights “out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety”. Dennis Muilenburg, president, chief executive and chairman of Boeing, said: “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.” Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said: “Lives must come first always. But a brand is at stake as well. And that brand is not just Boeing. It’s America. What America means in international aviation and by extension in the larger world more generally—that we set the standard for safety, competence, and honesty in governance of aviation.” Shares in Boeing ticked higher to $377 each following the announcement. However, the company’s market value has dropped by nearly $26bn since the crash in Ethiopia at the weekend.What will happen to airline customers?
Southwest Airlines said it had immediately removed all 34 of the planes from scheduled service. Although it has the biggest fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8 planes in the world, Southwest Airlines said they account “for less than 5% of our daily flights”. It said it is offering “flexible rebooking policies” which means that any customer booked on a cancelled Max 8 flight can rebook on alternate flights “without any additional fees or fare differences within 14 days of their original date of travel”. American Airlines said 24 of its aircraft would be affected by the suspension, adding: “Our teams will be working to rebook customers as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience.” United Airlines said that its Max aircraft account for roughly 40 flights a day. It said: “Through a combination of spare aircraft and rebooking customers, we do not anticipate a significant operational impact as a result of this order.”Analysis: Theo Leggett, BBC international business correspondent With other aviation authorities around the world deciding to ground the 737 Max, the FAA – which provides the safety certification for the new aircraft – was under intense pressure to fall into line. What’s interesting here, though, is what the FAA has actually said. While the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, for example, said its actions were simply precautionary, the FAA has gone further. The US regulator, which is actually involved in the investigation, says it has made its decision as a result of new evidence collected at the site and analysed today – as well as satellite data. That will have set alarm bells ringing at Boeing’s headquarters in Chicago. Since the accident, analysts have focused on similarities between Sunday’s tragedy, and another crash involving a 737 Max off Indonesia last October. Has the FAA found evidence that suggests those similarities were more than just superficial? And does that mean Boeing’s MCAS anti-stall system, already implicated in the Indonesia crash, may also have played a role in the latest disaster?