US grounds Boeing 737 MAX fleet after new evidence surfaces
After days of mounting pressure, and just about all national regulators around the world grounding the planes, the US has grounded Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft.
This reverses an earlier decision where American regulators gave the planes approval to keep flying after the fatal crash in Ethiopia last Sunday.
The decision, announced by President Trump, follows decisions by safety regulators in some 42 countries to ban flights by Boeing 737 MAX-model jets.
Up to now, the US Federal Aviation Administration had been resolute, saying beforehand that it had seen “no systemic performance issues” that would prompt it to halt flights of the jet.
Newly available satellite-tracking data shows that the Ethiopian flight that crashed on Sunday had similar erratic flight performance after it took off, eerily similar to the problems faced by the Lion Air 737 Max 8 plane that crashed off Jakarta last October.
Experts currently believe that an automated system may have malfunctioned on both flights.
The groundings also come at a time when several 737 MAX 8 pilots have shared ‘unusual’ experiences during take off after switching to auto-pilot when the plane tried to dip its nose violently.
Ethiopian Airlines said that one of two pilots on Sunday’s flight reported “flight-control problems” to air traffic controllers minutes before the plane crashed.
The 737 MAX is Boeing’s best-selling jet ever and is expected to be a major driver of profit, with more than 4,500 of the planes on order. The company’s shares have fallen about 11 percent this week.
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