After the second fatal crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jet in under five months, the U.S Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has halted the operation of the aircraft. This is the second time the FAA has had to intervene with a Boeing Jet in six years after it temporarily grounded the 787 Dreamliner in 2013 over lithium battery problems.
According to Reuters, Shares of the world’s biggest plane maker, which were up earlier in the session, fell 2 percent to US$370.48. The shares have fallen about 13 percent since Sunday’s crash, losing about US$32 billion of market value.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, President Trump said: “We’re going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition to ground all flights of the 737 MAX 8 and the 737 MAX 9 and planes associated with that line.
“The FAA is prepared to make an announcement very shortly regarding the new information and physical evidence that we have received from the site, and from other locations and through a couple of other complaints.”
Boeing has confirmed it supports the move by the FAA, while adding that it has said it has full confidence in the 737 MAX – which has 371 jets in operation around the world.
In the meantime, discovering the cause of the crash has suffered a major setback with Germany’s federal agency responsible for investigating aircraft accidents unable to analyze the data from black boxes recovered from the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines jet which crashed on Sunday killing all 157 passengers and crew on board.
“This is a new type of aircraft with a new black box, with new software. We can’t do it,” said Germout Freitag, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU).
