Canada barred Boeing’s 737 Max jetliner from its airspace on Tuesday after satellite data showed fluctuations in the takeoff angle of a downed Ethiopian Airlines flight that mirrored those before an Indonesian crash involving the same type of aircraft six months earlier.
While there’s not enough information yet to conclude that the same problem occurred in both cases, “we decided that, given the comparison with the previous flight, it was prudent to make this decision,” Transport Minister Marc Garneau said in a news conference in Ottawa.
Canada’s action follows similar moves in the European Union as well as countries from China to the United Kingdom that briefly left the U.S. standing virtually alone in allowing flights by the 737 Max 8, the latest version of an airline industry workhorse that is Boeing’s best-selling model ever. President Trump said the U.S. would sideline the planes on Wednesday afternoon, amid growing pressure.
[List: Countries and airlines grounding Boeing 737 MAX 8 after deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash]
Regulators worldwide have described their decision to ground the planes as a precaution intended to ensure passenger safety until the cause of the Ethiopian crash is determined.
The pilot of that airliner, which came down shortly after its takeoff on Sunday, killing all 157 people aboard, described control issues before losing contact with air traffic controllers, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The circumstances of the crash immediately prompted comparisons with the Indonesian accident on Oct. 29, prompting some passengers to avoid the relatively new airliner and U.S. politicians to urge more decisive action by the Federal Aviation Administration.
In the Indonesian crash, a malfunctioning sensor on a 737 Max 8 flown by Lion Air fed incorrect data on the airliner’s ascent vector to a computer system that attempted to lower the angle to avoid a stall, Garneau said. That prompted a struggle between the plane’s computer system — known as Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS — and the pilot, who ultimately lost control of the aircraft. All 189 people aboard were killed, and U.S. regulators required airlines to update operations manuals on the handling of such issues.
“If we look at the profile, there were certain fluctuations in the vertical profile” of the Ethiopian Airlines plane akin to those of the aircraft in Indonesia, Garneau said. “This is not the proof that it is the same root problem, and it could be something else. We need to wait to see that data and hear the voices on the recorders, the black boxes that were found, which have more information.”
Garneau said his agency has been working closely with both the FAA, the certifying authority for the 737 Max, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the office of Elaine Chao, President Trump’s transportation secretary. There was no political pressure from the U.S., where Boeing is a leading manufacturer with close ties to the government, to allow the plane to keep flying, Garneau said.
“With so many flights that fly between our two countries and a natural affinity for each other as two countries, we adopt a fairly similar approach,” he said. “But we make our own decisions in Canada, and those decisions may be different from those of our colleagues south of the border, and they’re aware of it.”
The FAA, which had found no basis to ground the aircraft by Tuesday evening, changed course on Wednesday in a decision announced by Trump, who said safety was a “paramount concern.”
The action had been urged by lawmakers from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and a former GOP presidential candidate, to Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking her party’s nomination to run against President Trump.
Trump himself criticized the technological complexity of modern aircraft on Twitter a day earlier and spoke by phone afterward with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who assured the commander in chief of the planemaker’s confidence in the 737 Max.
Since only 58 of the 737 Max models are flown by U.S. airlines, grounding them wouldn’t disrupt air travel significantly, Thomas Cooke, a professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business who specializes in business ethics and legal liability, told the Washington Examiner.
“This is nothing in the overall size of the airline fleet,” Cooke said. While Boeing has orders for more than 4,600 of the Max — a fuel-efficient upgrade of its single-aisle airliner used around the world — it only began delivering the planes in 2017. Fewer than 400 are in service globally.
Calling a time-out is the prudent choice, Cooke said.
“I’m just worried that what comes out of this is an underlying fear among consumers that maybe now is not the time for flying, period,” he added before the FAA’s decision. “We’re approaching a very busy time of year when people are making summer plans. The public needs to have confidence, confidence in the airlines and confidence in the manufacturers and the government as well.”
