U.S. Joins List Of Countries Grounding Boeing Planes After Ethiopian Airlines Crash

With Meghna Chakrabarti

What's the future hold for Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft? Two deadly crashes in less than five months. The U.S. has joined other countries in grounding flights. We talk with top aviation specialists about the technology of Boeing’s once fastest-selling airplane.

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Lori Aratani, transportation reporter for the Washington Post covering airports and airlines. (@loriara)

Captain Larry Rooney, president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association (@CAPApilots), which represents over 30,000 professional airline pilots at 14 airlines. Captain and check airman at American Airlines with over 18,000 flight hours. A 35-year veteran of the airline industry with background in aviation safety, training and international and domestic operations. Served as technical expert and featured for his pilot advocate work in Clint Eastwood’s film "Sully."

Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (@NTSB). He served from 1994 to 2001.

Washington Post: "FAA’s emergency order grounding Boeing jets came after the agency identified similarities between crashes in Ethiopia, Indonesia" — "After days of resistance, the United States on Wednesday followed its counterparts around the world in grounding the Boeing 737 Max 8, the aircraft involved in a deadly crash in Ethi­o­pia on Sunday and another several months ago in Indonesia.

"Federal Aviation Administration officials said that airplane tracking data they viewed Wednesday and new evidence from the wreckage of the crash in Ethiopia showed similarities to the crash in Indonesia, leading the agency to ground both the 737 Max 8 and the Max 9, another aircraft in the series.

"President Trump announced the abrupt about-face Wednesday, after U.S. officials found themselves nearly alone in allowing the planes to remain in the air."

New York Times: "Ethiopian Airlines Crash Updates: Britain Joins Ban of Boeing Max 8 Jets" — "Britain, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Oman banned all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes from their airspaces on Tuesday, two days after 157 people were killed on such a plane during a flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya.

"At least 25 airlines have now grounded the Max 8, which has crashed twice in five months. Boeing stands by the airworthiness of the jet, but it said it planned to issue a software update and was working on changes to its flight controls and training guidelines. Read about how the airline is dealing with the fallout from the crash.

"Investigators from the United States and elsewhere have arrived at the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash site. Much of the investigation will focus on the so-called black boxes, voice and data recorders that were recovered on Monday."

The Atlantic: "Is It Time to Worry About the Boeing 737 Max 8?" — "The first thing to say after an aviation disaster, such as the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people aboard over the weekend, is that it is an unspeakable tragedy for those who perished and for the families, communities, and organizations that will forever feel the effects of this loss. Sympathies to all of them.

"The second thing to say is that much of the initial guesswork and speculation about crashes turn out to be false, and it can take months or years to deduce what actually happened. (Or longer, as with the ongoing uncertainty about the lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished more than five years ago.)

"Modern airlines are statistically very, very safe. The most recent U.S. airline fatality was in April 2018, when an engine blew up on a Southwest flight—and the debris hit a window and pulled one passenger partly outside, leading to her death. Five years before that, an Asiana Airlines plane, from Korea, had a misjudged-landing accident in San Francisco, in which three passengers died. Before that had been another multiyear stretch of no fatalities in U.S. airline operations."

Anna Bauman produced this hour for broadcast.