Trump orders “immediate” flight ban on Boeing 737 Max
US President Donald Trump said on March 13 that the US will "immediately" ground Boeing 737 Max 8 and Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft after a series of countries stopped flying or closed their airspace to the aircraft involved in two recent catastrophic accidents.
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| US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters |
“Pilots have been notified, all airlines have been notified and are in agreement with this decision. The safety of the American people and everyone is our concern,” CBS quoted President Trump as saying from the White House on March 13.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has identified similarities in the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air crashes, based on satellite data and new evidence from the Ethiopian Airlines crash site, leading to the decision to ground all Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
In an emergency announcement yesterday, the FAA said that new information about the Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10 shows “some similarities” between the two tragedies, leading to the need to investigate whether the two incidents have the same cause. The FAA emphasized that the decision to suspend flights of Boeing 737 Max is effective “immediately” pending investigation and analysis of the black box data of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane.
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| The US is one of the last countries to ground the Boeing 737 Max. Photo: BBC |
Starting yesterday, US airlines, including American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, began to suspend Boeing 737 Max flights.
Reuters, citing a source familiar with the matter, said that the US Congress will ask the FAA to explain why it took so long to decide to suspend flights of the Boeing 737 Max while other countries responded quite quickly. The FAA representative is expected to explain this to Congress today.
In another related development, Boeing decided to ground its entire fleet of 371 Boeing 737 Max aircraft pending the results of the investigation. On the other hand, the company affirmed that it still "believes in the safety of the Boeing 737 Max".
The US is the latest country to decide to ground the Boeing 737 Max after nearly every country in the world either grounded or closed its airspace to the aircraft following the tragic crash of Ethiopian Airlines last weekend.
An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed just six minutes after takeoff on the morning of March 10, killing all 157 people on board. The accident occurred just months after a Lion Air (Indonesia) plane crash that killed 189 people. The two accidents raised doubts about the safety of this new type of aircraft.
