Boeing 737-8 Maxes Are Being Grounded In Two Countries After A Crash In Ethiopia

Plane crashes always bring about an outpouring of sympathy when they happen, but they don’t always bring about an immediate change in the way air travel operates. A deadly crash on Sunday, however, appears to be one of the latter sort. Boeing 737-8 Maxes are being grounded in two countries and within several other airlines after one of the planes went down in Ethiopia in very similar circumstances to a previous crash in Indonesia.

Ethiopian Airlines announced on Twitter on Monday morning that it was grounding its fleet of Boeing 737-8 Max planes.

"Although we don’t yet know the cause of the accident, we had to decide to ground the particular fleet as extra safety precaution," the airline wrote.

Authorities elsewhere followed Ethiopian Airlines’ lead in taking the Boeing 737-8 Maxes out of the sky. The Chinese government took action on Monday morning, ordering all Chinese airlines to ground their 737-8 Maxes, according to The New York Times. Chinese airlines had been flying a combined total of 96 of those planes, and they were only given nine hours to switch over to different jets on the planned routes. The New York Times also wrote that Cayman Airlines decided to ground the two Boeing 737-8 Maxes that it had been flying.

Boeing declined to offer comment on news that its aircraft had been subject to grounding in multiple places, but a spokesman did email Bustle a statement about the Ethiopian crash, saying that the company was "deeply saddened to learn of the passing of the passengers and crew on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a 737 MAX 8 airplane" and pledging technical assistance to those investigating the crash in Ethiopia.

More to come …

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