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13 March 2019 2.00 h

international

European airspace closed to new Boeing 737 as “precaution”

The prob­lems are in­creas­ing for Boe­ing due to the se­ri­ous se­cu­rity doubts gen­er­ated by the sec­ond ac­ci­dent in only five months in­volv­ing its lat­est model, the 737 MAX 8. While the in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the causes of last Sun­day’s un­re­solved in­ci­dent in Ethiopia con­tin­ues, the Eu­ro­pean Avi­a­tion Safety Agency (AESA) last night banned the Boe­ing 737 8 and 9 mod­els from the air­space of the 28 EU coun­tries. The “pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure” was adopted with im­me­di­ate ef­fect “to guar­an­tee the safety of pas­sen­gers,” ac­cord­ing to an AESA press re­lease.

Fol­low­ing China’s ex­am­ple, a dozen gov­ern­ments around the globe had al­ready an­nounced the clo­sure of air­space to the 737 until the causes of the Ethiopia and In­done­sia crashes have been iden­ti­fied, both of which hap­pened shortly after the new model of Boe­ing had taken off.

The mea­sures will force changes in the op­er­a­tions of many air­lines, with can­cel­la­tions and de­lays ex­pected. Crews have also been af­fected, the Ar­gen­tine pi­lots as­so­ci­a­tion re­fus­ing to pilot the Boe­ing 737.

Nor­we­gian air­lines yes­ter­day an­nounced that it will leave its Boe­ing 737 air­craft on the ground “until fur­ther no­tice”. None of its 5 planes at Barcelona’s El Prat air­port are 737s.

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