Follow Us on Google
Facing its worst crisis in over 50 years, embattled US aircraft manufacturer, Boeing Corporation, has ordered a temporary suspension of the “entire global fleet” of the Boeing 737 MAX 8aircraft.
“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution,” said Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s President/CEO in a statement on the company’s website.
“We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with investigators to deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”
The order comes as the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also ordered the temporary grounding of all 737 MAX aircraft operated by US airlines or in US airspace.
The FAA’s move came minutes after US President Donald Trump, issued an emergency order for the grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft in the country.
“I didn’t want to take any chances,” said Trump. “We could have delayed it. We maybe didn’t have to make it at all. But I felt it was important both psychologically and in a lot of other ways.
“The safety of the American people, of all people, is our paramount concern,” Trump said.
The US was one of the last countries to shut down the Boeing model after two deadly downings in six months, with about 50 countries suspending use of the jet soon after the Ethiopian disaster.
The US FAA said the decision was based on new evidence gathered at the Ethiopian Airlines crash site, near the capital Addis Ababa, as well as “newly refined satellite data”.
“The agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analysed today,” the FAA said in a statement.
