Trump orders flight ban on crash jet
Presisdent Donald Trump yesterday ordered the grounding of Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft, reversing a decision by US regulators to keep the planes flying in the wake of a deadly crash in Ethiopia.
‘‘The safety of the American people, and all people, is our paramount concern,’’ Trump said, adding there was ‘‘new information and physical evidence’’ from the crash site of the Boeing jet, which came down shortly after take-off on Monday, killing 157 on board.
The Ethiopian jet performed an erratic ascent similar to that of a 737 Max 8 operated by Lion Air that crashed in Indonesia in October, killing 189.
Forty-two countries have since banned flights by the jets as a precautionary measure but America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had insisted it had seen ‘‘no systemic performance issues’’.
Trump’s emergency order came hours after Canada took the decision to ground the aircraft. Marc Garneau, its transport minister, said they had taken the decision after satellite data suggested similarities between the flight profiles of the Ethiopian jet and the crash in Indonesia last year.
In a statement, Boeing said it ‘‘continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max’’ but had suspended all 371 of its global fleet ‘‘out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public’’.
The 737 Max is Boeing’s bestselling jet, with around 5000 of the planes on order. Dennis Muilenburg, the chief executive, had made a personal appeal to Trump in a phone call on Wednesday, reassuring the president of the fleet’s safety, according to
The decision to ground the jets caused travel chaos in the US yesterday. Southwest Airlines has the world’s largest 737 Max fleet with 34 jets and American Airlines, the largest airline in the world, operates 24.
It also emerged yesterday that American pilots had warned of a control problem on the Boeing 737 Max nearly a year before the crash in Ethiopia. Pilots working for several US airlines reported to US authorities that the jet had a tendency to pitch its nose down as early as April 2018, according to Nasa files seen by US media.
In November, two incidents were reported to the Nasa-run Aviation Safety Reporting Database involving problems in controlling the 737 Max just after take-off with autopilot engaged, according US publications.
One pilot called the flight manual ‘‘inadequate and almost criminally insufficient’’.