ANALYSIS: How the industry has reacted to the Ethiopian Max crash, FlightGlobal, 15 MAR 2019
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-how-the-industry-has-reacted-to-the-ethiop-456688/
At first, only China and a few smaller carriers grounded their Boeing 737 Max fleets in the response to the 10 March crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302, in which 157 people were killed.
While Chinese carriers had a combined fleet of 97 aircraft, that could still, just, be ignored – put it down to politics, maybe – but then over the coming days, a steady drip became a trickle, which became a torrent, as regulators across the globe ordered the 737 Max grounded.
When the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) finally acted on 12 March – a number of its national constituents already having moved unilaterally to ground the Max – followed by its Canadian counterpart early the next day, that left just the US regulator as a hold-out.
In fact, the US Federal Aviation Administration had rejected action for three days, but eventually fell into line on 13 March, when President Donald Trump announced that the USA would order that both current in-service Max variants – the 737-8 and -9 – be removed from operations.
"Those planes are grounded effective immediately," Trump said. "The safety of the American people, of all people, is our paramount concern."
In the days preceding the presidential intervention, the FAA had repeatedly issued statements stressing that it lacked sufficient evidence to ground the Boeing narrowbody.