Boeing faces crisis with worldwide grounding of 737 MAX jetliners

The United States grounded Boeing’s money-spinning 737 MAX aircraft on Wednesday over safety fears after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash that killed 157 people, leaving the world’s largest planemaker facing its worst crisis in years. The US FAA cited new satellite data and evidence from the scene of Sunday’s crash near Addis Ababa for its decision to join Europe, China and other nations in suspending 737 MAX flights. The crash was the second disaster involving the 737 MAX, the world’s most-sold modern passenger aircraft, in less than five months. The acting administrator of the FAA, Daniel Elwell, said he did not know how long the US grounding of the aircraft would last. A software fix for the 737 Max that Boeing has been working on since a fatal crash last October in Indonesia will take months to complete, Elwell said. The single-aisle 737 is central to Boeing’s future in its battle with Airbus. The new variant of the 737, the fastest-selling jetliner in Boeing’s history, is viewed as the likely workhorse for global airlines for decades. “The agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today,” the FAA said, shortly after US President Donald Trump announced the planes would be grounded. It was the second time the FAA has halted flights of a Boeing plane in six years. It grounded the 787 Dreamliner in 2013 because of problems with smoking batteries.<br/>