Boeing’s black boxes in Paris for decoding
INVESTIGATORS in France took possession of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet’s black boxes yesterday, seeking clues into a disaster that has grounded Boeing’s global 737 MAX fleet and left scores of families mourning and angry.
Flight 302 crashed after take-off from Addis Ababa on Sunday killing 157 people from 35 countries.
It was the second such calamity involving Boeing’s flagship new plane model in six months.
Possible links between the accidents have rocked the aviation industry, scared passengers worldwide, and left the world’s biggest plane-maker scrambling to prove the safety of a money-spinning model intended to be the standard for decades.
Relatives of the dead stormed out of a meeting with Ethiopian Airlines yesterday, decrying a lack of transparency, while others made the painful trip to the crash scene.
“I can’t find you! Where are you?” cried an Ethiopian woman, in a white mourning shawl, as she held a framed portrait of her brother in the charred and debris-strewn field. A WOMAN mourns at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town Bishoftu, near Addis Ababa, yesterday. |
Countries around the world, including an initially reluctant US, have stopped using the 371 MAX planes, although they are largely coping by switching planes.
Another 5 000 MAXs are on order, meaning the financial implications are huge for the industry. Deliveries of Boeing’s best-selling jets have been frozen, although production continues.
Although it maintained the planes were safe, Boeing has supported the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) move. Its stock has fallen about 11% since the crash, wiping nearly $26billion (R377bn) off its market value.
After an apparent tussle over where the investigation should be held, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders arrived in Paris and were handed over to France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) agency.
A BEA spokesman said he did not know what condition the black boxes were in. “First we will try to read the data,” he said, adding that the first analyses could take between half a day and several days.
The investigation has added urgency since the FAA on Wednesday grounded the 737 MAX aircraft citing satellite data and evidence from the scene indicating some similarities and “the possibility of a shared cause” with the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October that killed 189 people.
A software fix for the 737 MAX that Boeing has been working on since the Lion Air crash will take months to complete, the FAA said on Wednesday.
And in what may presage a raft of claims, Norwegian Air has said it would seek compensation from Boeing for costs and lost revenue after grounding its fleet of 737 MAX. THE BRITISH parliament was due to vote yesterday on seeking a last-minute Brexit delay, while Prime Minister Theresa May piled renewed pressure on reluctant lawmakers to back her EU divorce deal at the third time of asking.
Two weeks before Britain is due to leave the EU May is using the threat of a long extension to the Brexit deadline to push Eurosceptic rebels in her Conservative Party to finally back her deal. That vote could come next week.
May’s authority hit an all-time low this week after a series of parliamentary defeats and rebellions, but finance minister Philip Hammond said her plan was back on the agenda.
That plan, struck by May after twoand-a-half years of negotiations with the EU, was defeated heavily in parliament in January and again on Tuesday.
Although parliament on Wednesday voted against the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, the default position if nothing else is agreed remains that Britain will exit without a transition arrangement on March 29, a scenario business leaders warn would bring chaos to markets and supply chains.
Brexit supporters say in the longer term it would allow Britain to thrive and forge trade deals across the world.
May will put her deal to another vote if the circumstances are right, her spokesperson said.
EU leaders meeting next week will consider pressing Britain to delay Brexit by at least a year to find a way through its domestic deadlock, an EU official said.
“I will appeal to the EU27 to be open to a long extension if the UK finds it necessary to rethink its Brexit strategy and build consensus around it,” European Council president Donald Tusk said, referring to EU leaders who will meet May next Thursday and must agree to any extension.
But there was no sign the prospect of a long delay – which could lead to Britain having closer ties to the EU than planned by May or even a second Brexit referendum – was causing a shift in the views of pro-Brexit lawmakers who have so far thwarted May.
May also needs to win over the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) that props up her minority government in parliament and which has so far refused to back her plan.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said the party was working with the government to try to find a way of leaving the EU with a deal.
On Wednesday, parliament rejected leaving the EU without a deal, paving the way for yesterday’s vote.