Israel and the United States joined the rest of the global community on Wednesday in grounding the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from flying in their airspace.
President Donald Trump announced the immediate grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 planes.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Israel did the same. Both moves followed an emergency order by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to ground all MAX aircraft.
The agency said new information had come to light in its investigation of the Ethiopian Airlines crash this past Sunday that indicated “some similarities” with the crash of a Lion Air plane in October 2018, that “warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause that needs to be better understood and addressed.”
The text of the FAA statement follows:
“The FAA is ordering the temporary grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft operated by U.S. airlines or in U.S. territory. The agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today. This evidence, together with newly refined satellite data available to FAA this morning, led to this decision.
“The grounding will remain in effect pending further investigation, including examination of information from the aircraft’s flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders. An FAA team is in Ethiopia assisting the NTSB as parties to the investigation of the Flight 302 accident. The agency will continue to investigate.”
