WASHINGTON (Halbeeg News) – The government of the United States has joined several countries in grounding the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft following the tragic plane crash in Ethiopia on Sunday.
President Trump of US has declared today that all Boeing 737 MAX 8s and 737 MAX 9 planes in the United States would be grounded shortly after Canada’s aviation authority announced that they were closing Canadian airspace to the aircraft.
“We’re going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition to ground all flights of the 737 MAX 8 and the 737 MAX 9 planes,” President Trump told reporters in White House.
“The safety of the American people and all peoples is our paramount concern.”
The decision by President Trump comes on the heel of the announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration ordering the temporary grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or in the U.S. territory.
“The agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the [Ethiopian crash] site and analysed today. This evidence together with newly refined satellite available to FAA this morning, led to this decision,” statement by FAA reads in part.
On Wednesday, Canada’s aviation authority announced that they were closing Canadian airspace to the aircraft.
Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau in a statement has also announced the groundings of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.
“The advice the experts have provided is based on the information they have been receiving,” Garneau said. “The requirements for new procedures and training for Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 flight crews they have already put in place; and the latest information available from the incidents.”
The Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 was less than four months old when it went down six minutes into a flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on Sunday, disintegrating on impact.
Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 was the second crash of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 in less than six months and bore unnerving similarities to its first crash on October 29th, 2018.
That crash, Indonesia’s Lion Air flight 610, is still under investigation, but preliminary findings show that the plane appears to have suffered from a software bug that initiated the plane’s anti-stall software during takeoff. This forced the nose of the plane downward, which the pilots tried unsuccessfully to resist.
Discussion about this post