Chicago [USA]: US aircraft manufacturer Boeing, announced on Thursday that it has paused deliveries of its 737 MAX planes, after the jet model was grounded across the world in the wake of a deadly crash involving one of its planes in Ethiopia, which killed all 157 people on board.
While no time frame was announced on when the deliveries might resume, the production of the 737 MAX jets will still continue. “We continue to build 737 MAX airplanes while assessing how the situation, including potential capacity constraints, will impact our production system,” Russia Today quoted a Boeing spokesperson as saying. The decision came after the 737 MAX aircraft were grounded and banned from airspace of several countries, including the US, Canada, Singapore, UK, Ireland, France, India, Egypt, Japan and the Netherlands.
A host of carriers like Jet Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, Aeromexico, and Turkish Airlines have also grounded their fleets containing the said aircraft, citing customer safety. An aircraft of the same make was also involved in the Lion Airlines plane crash in the Java Sea near Jakarta, Indonesia last year. Here too, the aircraft crashed a few minutes after taking off, claiming the lives of all 189 people on board.
Shares of Boeing have plunged more than 10 per cent since the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 jet crashed on March 10, wiping more than 25 billion dollars off the company’s market value. Boeing said it remains confident in the safety of the jets, but that it recommended the shutdown itself “out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety,” according to a statement from the company.
