France accepts 737 black boxes as Macron hunts Airbus sales

Ethiopia has sent black boxes from a crashed Boeing 737 jet to France for decoding after refusing to hand them to US authorities that had kept the Max model flying after most other regulators grounded it. The flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders have arrived at the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, France’s air-accident investigator, with coordination meetings underway and technical work set to start Friday. The BEA said it will download data but hasn’t been asked to analyze it. Ethiopian Airlines, which operated the crashed jet, says the decision to send the black boxes to a European agency was a strategic one after the FAA was left isolated in arguing that the Max should continue flying. The US regulator finally grounded the model Wednesday amid mounting concern about similarities between the African tragedy and a crash in Indonesia, in which a computer system took control of a flight. Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation earlier declined to work on the boxes, saying it wasn’t technically possible. France has a direct link to the crash, which killed 157, since the Max’s engines are made by the CFM International venture of General Electric and Paris-based Safran. The choice of the BEA for the decoding of the recorders still represents a snub for US regulators used to taking a leading role in probes of Boeing planes. The NTSB will still have a role given that the 737 is made in Seattle, and plans to send three investigators to France to help the BEA with the downloading and analysis, according to a statement.<br/>