Sen. Mitt Romney on Tuesday joined Democratic lawmakers who are urging the Federal Aviation Administration to ground Boeing’s 737-8 MAX, the new jetliner involved in two crashes overseas in the past six months.
The U.S. air-safety regulator has so far declined to sideline the aircraft, citing a lack of facts on the cause of Sunday’s crash outside Ethiopia’s capital, despite apparent similarities with a late October crash in Indonesia that have prompted the European Union as well as countries from China to Indonesia, the U.K., and Australia to halt flights on the popular single-aisle commercial jet.
The FAA should take a similar step out of an “abundance of caution,” Romney, R-Utah, said on Twitter.
Out of an abundance of caution for the flying public, the @FAANews should ground the 737 MAX 8 until we investigate the causes of recent crashes and ensure the plane’s airworthiness.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 12, 2019
Several Democrats reached the same conclusion this week.
“Today, immediately, the FAA should get those planes out of the sky,” added Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat seeking her party’s nomination to run against President Trump next year. “The world has now witnessed the second tragic crash of one of these planes in less than six months. While we do not know the causes of these crashes, serious questions have been raised.”
Such public statements from lawmakers will compound the pressure on Chicago-based Boeing, whose stock has fallen 12 percent in the past two days. The plane — the latest version of an airline-industry workhorse — is the best-selling model in Boeing’s history: Carriers have placed more than 4,600 orders, though only about 350 have been delivered and are in use.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also called on the FAA to act and said doing so wouldn’t be too disruptive, since there only so many of the new planes in service in the U.S. “This aircraft model represents only a small fraction of the domestic fleet,” she wrote in a letter to the FAA.
“Several other countries have already taken this important step,” Feinstein noted, which means the FAA should “evaluate whether similar precautions in the United States are advisable and practicable. Continuing to fly an airplane that has been involved in two fatal crashes within just six months presents an unnecessary, potentially life-threatening risk to the traveling public.”
Bound for Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed shortly after its takeoff at 8:38 a.m. Sunday, killing all 157 people aboard. The flight was commanded by Yared Getachew, a senior captain with more than 8,000 flight hours, according to the carrier, and the aircraft itself had returned to Addis Ababa from Johannesburg, South Africa, earlier Sunday morning.
The crash in Indonesia, involving a Lion Air jet, occurred after an “input error” involving a sensor designed to keep the aircraft from ascending so rapidly that it stalls. The error forced the plane downward too quickly for the pilot to compensate, authorities said, and its 189 occupants were killed. U.S. regulators required airlines last fall to update operations manuals on the handling of such issues.
Despite the reported similarities, “this investigation has just begun and to date, we have not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions,” the FAA said in a notice to 737-8 operators worldwide on Monday. “All data will be closely examined during this investigation, and the FAA will take appropriate action if the data indicates the need to do so.”
Chicago-based Boeing is working with both customers and regulators and has sent a technical team of its own to Ethiopia; the company says it has no basis so far to change its operational guidance to aircraft operators.
“We have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX,” the planemaker said Tuesday. “We understand that regulatory agencies and customers have made decisions that they believe are most appropriate for their home markets. We’ll continue to engage with them to ensure they have the information needed to have confidence in operating their fleets.”
