More than a dozen airlines and nations including China, Australia, the U.K. and Indonesia have grounded all of Boeing’s most popular jet as the company scrambles to deal with the fallout from a deadly plane crash in Ethiopia.
For the second time in only a matter of months, a Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed just minutes after an erratic takeoff, leaving the American aerospace giant and safety regulators with the task of determining what went wrong and whether the plane is safe to fly.
“External reports are drawing similarities between this accident and the Lion Air Flight 610 accident,” an American regulator from the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. “However, this investigation has just begun and to date we have not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions.”
Investigators in Ethiopia on Monday said the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder had both been recovered, The New York Times reported, but it will still take time to discern what caused Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 to crash, leaving all 157 people on board dead.
This most recent incident occurred just months after a Lion Air flight crashed under similar circumstances in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board in October. The cause of that crash is still under investigation but Indonesian and American aviation authorities have raised the possibility that software in the Max 8 was partly to blame.
At least 20 airlines around the world have grounded their 737 Max 8 planes, leaving more than 140 of the roughly 350 new jets that were in service until just recently on the tarmac.
Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, the only two carriers in the United States that use the jet, according to The Times, both said they would continue to fly the plane.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
