Pilot makes plea to ground crash jets as holiday firms insist they are safe

A pilot turned Labour peer has urged ministers to ground the Boeing model involved in two fatal crashes, saying: “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

Lord Tunnicliffe spoke out as TUI said it would still use its Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet, touted as the “most reliable aircraft in the world”.

It took delivery in December and plans to have a total of 32.

Asked if it would take any action in response to Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash, the airline said: “We are, as always, in close contact with the manufacturer. We have no indication we can’t operate our 737 Max in a safe way like all other planes in our network.”

TUI assured passengers that safety was its priority.

Ryanair has 110 of the 737 Max200 jets – a variant of the Max 8 – which will fly on 40 routes out of London Stansted from May.

At least nine Britons were among 157 killed when the Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed six minutes after take-off on Sunday with no survivors.

In October the same 737 MAX 8 model was crashed in the Lion Air tragedy in Indonesia killing 189.

Aviation analyst Mary Schiavo said: “It’s highly suspicious…a brand-new aircraft that’s gone down twice in a year. That rings alarm bells because that just doesn’t happen.”

Lord Tunnicliffe, who flew previous models of the Boeing 737, urged the Government to stop the jets flying. He told Transport Minister Baroness Sugg: “In my day we had a rule – if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. The industry seems to have lost sight of this. Initial reports strongly suggest the latest crash is related [to the Lion Air crash].”

He added: “What will the Minister do? Can she explain why the Government is not taking immediate action to ground this aircraft until they have had a ­satisfactory explanation of the crash?”

Baroness Sugg said the Civil Aviation Authority is working with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency “and any decision to ground flights is best taken at an international level”.

Norwegian airline, which serves Manchester, Gatwick and Edinburgh, has 18 MAX 8 jets. But China, the Cayman Islands, Indonesia, South Africa and Ethiopia have grounded theirs. China said the crashes “have some degree of similarity”.

But experts have cautioned against drawing parallels too quickly between the incidents, and reassured passengers of the industry’s high safety standards.

But Lynette Dray of the University of Central London said of China’s decision to ground its MAX 8 fleet: “There’s just not enough information available yet to say definitively whether it is justified.”

The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder have been recovered from Sunday’s wreckage. Investigators said the Lion Air crash pilots had appeared to struggle with a new automated anti-stalling system.

Boeing warned airlines of a problem and is due to release a software update.

The CAA said it is “liaising with the European Aviation Safety Agency”.

Read More

Top news stories from Mirror Online

Source: Read Full Article