Flight cancellations mount as 737 Max 8 stays grounded

No plane. No game. It has been 12 days since the Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Boeing 737 MAX 8, and airlines are warning of more flight cancellations to come. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are offering customers a cushion for how long they can cancel or rebook their flights. And though it’s still unclear how long the FAA order will last, other carriers are planning long term: Air Canada told its passengers to brace for cancellations heading into July.

American Airlines, which has 24 MAX planes in its fleet, said Sunday it would extend cancellations through April 24. The carrier said it expects to cancel roughly 90 flights per day based on its April schedule, and that it was waiting on the FAA, the Department of Transportation and the National Transportation Safety Board, along with Boeing, before reintroducing the grounded planes.

The flight disruptions are the latest ripple effects of a mounting crisis of confidence for Boeing, the manufacturer of the 737 MAX 8 jet. Those concerns started when a brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in Indonesia in late October, killing 189 people.

Weeks later, Boeing disclosed the existence of a new flight control system called MCAS, which can push the plane’s nose downward in certain circumstances. Pilot groups in the U.S. were incensed that Boeing had built the system into its new jets without detailing it in training courses, raising concerns that pilots might not know how to take control at a crucial moment.

Those criticisms reached a fever pitch earlier this month when another Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in Ethiopia under similar circumstances. Regulators in China, Europe, Indonesia and Ethiopia quickly grounded the planes; the FAA held off for several days before idling all 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes in the U.S. Investigators have yet to directly assign blame for either crash.

The FAA’s relative slowness in grounding the 737 MAX, along with reports of a criminal investigation into how the new plane was certified, has shaken international confidence in the agency. Numerous international regulators committed to conducting their own regulatory reviews of Boeing’s MCAS fix rather than trust the FAA’s analysis. This could extend the financial pain for Boeing, Cowen investment analyst Cai Von Rumour said in a note Monday to investors, because about 40 percent of Boeing’s 737 MAX backlog comes from China, Canada and Europe.