U.S. Grounds Boeing Planes, After Days of Pressure
After days of mounting pressure, the United States grounded Boeing's 737 Max aircraft on Wednesday, reversing an earlier decision in which American regulators said the planes could keep flying after a deadly crash in Ethiopia.
The decision, announced by President Trump, followed determinations by safety regulators in some 42 countries to ban flights by the jets, which are now grounded worldwide. Pilots, flight attendants, consumers and politicians from both major parties had been agitating for the planes to be grounded in the United States. Despite the clamor, the Federal Aviation Administration had been resolute, saying on Tuesday that it had seen "no systemic performance issues" that would prompt it to halt flights of the jet.
That changed Wednesday when, in relatively quick succession, Canadian and American aviation authorities said they were grounding the planes after newly available satellite-tracking data suggested similarities between Sunday's crash in Ethiopia and one involving a Boeing 737 Max 8 in Indonesia in October.
Previously: Second 737 MAX8 Airplane Crash Reinforces Speculation on Flying System Problems
Related: Boeing 737 MAX 8 Could Enable $69 Trans-Atlantic Flights
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Thursday March 14 2019, @09:14PM (1 child)
The FAA grounded them. Trump announced it, he didn't really make the call. Stop.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday March 15 2019, @07:39AM
That’s not the order of events, but I didn’t mention trump at all.
The order of events were countries from singapore to austrailia to France to Uk to Canada had grounded them, but the faa was still saying they were fine.
Then the faa finally changed their mind days after the second crash of a brand new plane in 6 months. Something that statistically was highly unlikely to happen without the cause of the two crashes being linked, and the first crash already blamed on the new plane.