GROUNDED!
Watchdog bans controversial jet from British skies after fatal crashes
‘Safety must come first’
BRITAIN’S aviation watchdog made a U-turn yesterday to ban all Boeing 737 Max planes from UK airspace following a revolt by anxious passengers.
Travellers bombarded TUI and Norwegian with requests to change planes after the two budget carriers refused to stop flying the aircraft in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday.
The accident near Addis Ababa, which killed all 157 people on board, was the second involving a new Boeing 737 Max in less than five months.
Although the investigation into the tragedy has just begun, experts believe both crashes may have been caused by the same fault with the plane’s antistalling system, which is said to force the aircraft’s nose down repeatedly.
Nine Britons were killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, including UN environmentalist Joanna Toole, 36, from Exmouth in Devon.
Authorities in China, Indonesia and Ethiopia took immediate action to ground the plane following the accident, but the Civil Aviation Authority said on Monday that it had no powers to take similar action.
It insisted the decision rested with its EU counterpart, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.
But in a dramatic reversal yesterday, the CAA yesterday issued a ‘safety directive’ barring all passenger flights on Boeing 737 Max planes from ‘arriving, departing or overflying airspace’.
The only airlines this will affect are TUI, which flies the plane from Manchester airport, and Norwegian, which uses it at Gatwick and Edinburgh.
Their passengers face cancellations and delays that could last weeks.
The CAA, which is overseen by the Department for Transport, said the ruling was made to ‘protect the public’ following the Ethiopian crash.
It said that ‘given the similarity of the two accidents’ it had decided to ground all Boeing 737 Max planes as a ‘precautionary measure’ until the cause of the latest was established.
Aviation minister Baroness Sugg and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling put pressure on the CAA to ground the planes on Monday and again in a conference call with its chief executive Richard Moriarty yesterday morning, a Whitehall source claims.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency also banned all Boeing 737 Max planes from operating in the EU’s airspace, following similar moves by national air safety authorities in Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, Australia, Singapore, India and Malaysia.
Boeing’s share price fell by more than 6 per cent following the CAA announcement, meaning more than £21billion has been wiped off its share price since the close of trading on Friday.
Sunday’s crash comes five months after a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max plunged into the sea near Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 on board.
Like the Ethiopian Airlines plane, it crashed just minutes after take- off having climbed erratically and apparently struggled to gain height.
British authorities came under growing pressure to act as holidaymakers due to fly with TUI and Norwegian hit out at their decision to keep flying the aircraft. Passengers took to social
media over fears that their flights would be on the 737 Max.
Michael Bibby wrote: ‘TUI need to ground the death plane.’
Another told Norwegian Airlines: ‘I am not flying with Norwegian until you ground Boeing 737 Max. You can’t say that safety is your number 1 priority and at the same time put people’s lives at risk.’
Ryanair, which was due to begin using its new Boeing 737 Max planes at London Stansted in May, has also been inundated by queries from worried passengers.
The consumer group Which? warned that passengers may still find themselves on a Boeing 737 Max if they take an onward flight from another nation.
Norwegian Airlines apologised to customers ‘affected by temporary cancellations and delays’.
TUI, which said there would only be a ‘small number of short delays’, has the only five 737 Max aircraft operated by a British airline, with another which was set for its debut commercial flight this week.
The decision by the CAA to ground these planes was welcomed by pilots. Brian Strutton, general secretary of the pilots’ union Balpa said: ‘Safety must come first.’
Despite the strong reaction to the crash from air safety authorities around the world, the US has refused to ban the plane, with the Federal Aviation Administration insisting it was ‘airworthy’.
A spokesman for Boeing said: ‘Safety is Boeing’s number one priority and we have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max.
‘Regulatory agencies and customers have made decisions that they believe are most appropriate for their home markets.’