Trump Announces Ban of Boeing 737 Max Flights

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The Federal Aviation Administration had for days resisted calls to ground the 737 Max even as safety regulators in some 42 countries had banned flights by the jets.CreditCreditJoe Raedle/Getty Images

By Ian Austen and Selam Gebrekidan

March 13, 2019

President Trump announced that the United States was grounding Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft, reversing an earlier decision by American regulators to keep the jets flying in the wake of a second deadly crash involving one of the jets in Ethiopia.

The Federal Aviation Administration had for days resisted calls to ground the plane even as safety regulators in some 42 countries hadbanned flights by the jets. As recently as Tuesday, the agency said it had seen “no systemic performance issues” that would prompt it to halt flights of the jet.

The order came hours after Canada’s transport minister said that newly available satellite-tracking data suggested similarities between the crash in Ethiopia and another accident last October.

The crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 killed all 157 people on board, and took place just minutes after takeoff. In October, a 737 Max 8 operated by Lion Air, an Indonesian carrier, crashed in similar circumstance and 189 people were killed.

Marc Garneau, Canada’s transport minister had said that satellite tracing data showing the vertical path of the Ethiopian jet at take off and similar data from the Lion Air crash, had showed similar “vertical fluctuations” and “oscillations.”

“This is not conclusive, but it is something that points possibly in that direction, and at this point we feel that threshold has been crossed,” Mr. Garneau said.

Boeing 737 Max 8 Jets Are Grounded Nearly Everywhere

The jets typically make more than 8,500 flights per week worldwide.

[These countries have grounded the planes.]

The groundings in North America also come after 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 and told controllers that he wanted to turn back to Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa. The pilot was cleared to do so, three minutes before contact was lost with the cockpit, a spokesman for the airline said on Wednesday.

The disclosure suggests that a problem with the handling of the aircraft or the computerized flight control system could have been a factor. There has been no suggestion so far of terrorism or other outside interference in the functioning of the aircraft, which was only a few months old.

[Read the latest updates on the crash and the fallout.]

Officials examining the Indonesia crash have raised the possibility that a new flight-control system could have contributed to that earlier accident. As they banned flights by the aircraft this week, some safety regulators cited concerns that pilots would be unable to handle the aircraft if they were given inaccurate signals from key flight instruments.