Operation of all aircraft of the Boeing 737 MAX family has been temporarily suspended. The last aircraft of this family, which was in the sky, landed at Canadian Halifax airport, performing an Air Canada flight from San Francisco.
Previously, many countries have introduced a temporary ban on the operation of the Boeing 737 MAX8. Among them are the EU member states, the UAE, Turkey, Australia, China, and the USA.
All Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft will remain grounded at least until May, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The aircraft will not fly until a software update can be tested and installed, the US regulator said.
On Sunday, Ethiopian Airlines’ plane Boeing 737 MAX8 flying from Addis Ababa to Nairobi crashed on 60 km east of the capital of Ethiopia. The plane crash killed 157 people. This catastrophe was the second incident with aircraft of this type in six months: at the end of October 2018, the Boeing 737 MAX8 of the Indonesian company Lion Air fell into the Java Sea soon after departure from Jakarta airport. All 189 people were killed on board.
Although the investigation is still underway, some experts have pointed to similarities between the incidents, citing satellite data and evidence from the crash scene.
The US Representative Rick Larsen said the software upgrade would take a few weeks to complete, and installing it on all the aircraft would take “at least through April”.
Meanwhile, investigators in France have taken charge of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines aircraft’s black boxes as they attempt to uncover what caused the Boeing 737 Max disaster. The Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) received the flight data and cockpit voice recorders on Thursday. The first readings could take days, but a lot depends on the boxes’ condition.
