Boeing’s 737 Max 8 and 9 planes will remain grounded for weeks at a minimum, US politicians said on Thursday, as flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane arrived in France.
After a briefing with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), congressman Rick Larsen said the planes, which have been involved in two fatal crashes in the last five months, would be banned from flying “at least through April” while new software is installed and investigations continue.
Investigators will begin analysing flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines plane wreckage on Friday, in an attempt to establish what caused the crash that has grounded Boeing’s 737 Max fleet worldwide.
In a photo of the data recorder released by France’s bureau of civil aviation safety (BEA) the central part of the recorder appears intact, though the edge appears somewhat mangled. A BEA spokesman said it was unclear whether the data was retrievable.
There is mounting anger in Ethiopia over the handling of the crash. In Addis Ababa, about 200 family members of crash victims left a briefing with Ethiopian Airlines officials, saying the carrier has not given them adequate information.
Officials said they had opened a call-in centre that is open 18 hours a day to respond to questions, but relatives said they were not getting the answers they needed.
Relatives arrived at the crash scene in Hejere, about 31 miles (50km) from Addis Ababa, some wailing or beating their chests as a bulldozer navigated piles of debris. Blue plastic sheeting covered the wreckage of the plane.
The crash on Sunday, in which 157 people were killed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, was the second such calamity involving Boeing’s 737 Max in less than six months. A Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia in October, also shortly after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board.
Citing newly refined satellite data and evidence from the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, the FAA has suggested the possibility of a shared cause for the two crashes. After assessing that data, “it became clear to all parties that the track of the Ethiopian flight was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight”, FAA administrator Daniel Elwell told reporters.
But aviation experts cautioned that it was still too early to draw conclusions. “To my mind people are drawing optical conclusions at the moment,” said Robert Mann, aviation consultant and former airline executive. “We need to wait for the hard data from these readers.”
One central question investigators will address is whether software known as MCAS used by the 737 Max to prevent stalling was central to the accident. Lion Air officials have said sensors on their crashed plane produced erroneous information on its last four flights, triggering an automatic nose-down command that the pilots were unable to overcome on its final flight.
Ethiopian Airlines’ chief executive, Tewolde GebreMariam, said its pilots had received special training on how to deal with that problem. “In addition to the basic trainings given for 737 aircraft types, an additional training was given for the Max version,” Tewolde said. “After the Lion Air crash, questions were raised, so Boeing sent further instructions that it said pilots should know.”
(May 22, 2017) Boeing 737 Max enters commercial service
The first Boeing 737 Max begins commercial operations with Malindo Air. Norwegian Air is also an early adopter of the new model, operating transatlantic flights. The model promises fuel efficiencies attractive to carriers.
(October 29, 2018) Lion Air crash
Lion Air flight JT610 crashes after making a sudden, sharp dive into the Java Sea 13 minutes after departing from Jakarta, Indonesia. All 189 people onboard are killed. That particular plane had been in use for less than three months. The plane's black box recorder reveals that the Lion Air plane had experienced problems with its airspeed indicators on its last four flights.
(November 7, 2018) Boeing's new advice
Boeing issues revised instructions on how pilots should react to erroneous readings from “angle of attack” sensors, believed to be a key factor in the Lion Air crash.
(March 10, 2019) Ethiopia Airlines crash
Flight ET302 crashes about six minutes after taking off from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people onboard. The captain had reported difficulties, and flight radar data shows the aircraft was climbing erratically with an unstable vertical airspeed.
(March 13, 2019) Boeing grounds fleet
The EU, Canada and the US all ground the Boeing 737 Max. Boeing itself issues a statement saying it “continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max”, but that “out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public” it w recommending the grounding of the entire global fleet of 371 aircraft.
(April 4, 2019) Interim report findings
The interim report into the Ethiopian Airlines crash finds that the pilots correctly followed Boeing’s emergency instructions, but were still unable to stop the plane’s nose repeatedly pointing down. The jet hit an airspeed of 500 knots (575mph), well above its operational limits, before cockpit data recordings stopped.
(June 27, 2019) A new potential risk
Airlines extend their ban on using the Boeing 737 Max after the US aviation regulator said it had identified a new potential risk with the plane.
(July 10, 2019) Airbus soars
In the wake of Boeing’s troubles, Airbus seems set to overtake it as the world's biggest planemaker. As Boeing reported 239 commercial plane deliveries in the first half of the year, a 37% fall, rival Airbus shipped 389 deliveries, up 28% on the same period last year.
(July 15, 2019) Name change rumours
Pictures emerge of a Boeing 737 Max due to be delivered to Ryanair with the name 737 Max replaced by 737-8200 on the nose.
(October 30, 2019) Sensor concerns ignored
During congressional hearings into Boeing’s handling of the crisis, lawmakers were shown internal records revealing that three years before the crashes an employee had expressed concern that an anti-stall flight system could be triggered by a single sensor.
(January 10, 2020)
The crisis deepens with the release of hundreds of internal messages between employees working on the 737 Max aircraft, which boasted of deceiving safety regulators and said the plane had been “designed by clowns”.
(February 19, 2020)
Boeing orders inspections of its entire fleet of grounded 737 Max planes after it found foreign object debris in the fuel tanks of some of the mothballed planes.
The two crashes have shaken the aviation industry, scared passengers worldwide and put significant pressure on the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturer to prove the safety of a model intended to be the standard for decades. On Thursday the United Nations, which lost 21 members of staff in the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, said none of its staff should travel on 737 Max 8s until the cause of the crashes had been established.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump followed leaders around the world in grounding Boeing’s 737 Max fleet. The US president told reporters: “They [Boeing] have to find the problem … and they will find it.”
A software fix for the 737 Max that Boeing has been working on since the Lion Air crash will take months to complete, the FAA said on Wednesday. The implementation of that fix was delayed for five weeks because of the US’s government shutdown, the Wall Street Journal revealed this week. An FAA spokesman confirmed on Thursday that the FAA will not unground the airplanes until the software patch is approved and installed.
Deliveries have effectively been frozen, but production continues.
Norwegian Air has said it will seek compensation from Boeing for costs and lost revenue after grounding its 737 Max fleet. Japan became the latest nation to suspend the planes on Thursday, and Garuda Indonesia said it may cancel its order for 20 of the aircraft, depending on the FAA’s position.
Under international rules, Ethiopia is leading the investigation, but the BEA will analyse the black boxes as an adviser. The US authorities had lobbied to take the lead in the investigation. While the BEA is one of the world’s best qualified investigation teams Mann said it “looked political” that the boxes had not been sent to the US.
Boeing is one of the US’s most powerful lobbyists and spent more than $15m on Washington lobbying last year, according to OpenSecrets.org, a group that tracks lobbying data.
