You can continue to follow our live coverage on the Ethiopian Airlines crash here.
The flight recorders for Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 have arrived in Paris, where they will be analyzed for potential clues into Sunday’s plane crash.
A French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety spokesman said that the two black boxes would contain flight parameters as well as conversations in the cockpit.
He said there were less than a dozen laboratories around the world capable of reading the devices.
“When the black boxes have not (been damaged), the tapes or hard disks are intact, the data is easily recoverable. However, it also happens that entire passages of the recording are more or less damaged,” he said, adding that the analysis could take days.
Ethiopia had requested France’s assistance investigating the material as their country didn’t have the equipment necessary.
In the past 24 hours, international concern over the possible dangers of Boeing’s 737 Max 8 aircraft has only continued to grow.
US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday afternoon he would immediately ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft, amid concerns over their involvement in two major plane crashes less than six months apart.
Boeing issued a statement saying they would recommend the temporary global suspension of the entire 737 Max fleet. Fifty countries have now grounded or banned the planes inside their airspace.
It has only been four days since the Ethiopian Airlines crash which killed 157 people and sparked the growing backlash.
On Thursday morning, the plane’s black box is expected to arrive in Paris for analysis, potentially providing answers to victims’ families still mourning their loved ones.
You can catch up on our coverage by following the links below:
Boeing announced on Wednesday it would be recommending the grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes globally “out of an abundance of caution.”
But the move hasn’t stopped countries taking matters into their own hands, with Mexico, Panama and Thailand all subsequently announcing they would be suspending Boeing 737 Max jets temporarily.
In total, 50 countries have now grounded or banned the controversial Max 8 models which were involved in the Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday.
Following the announcement by US President Donald Trump that Boeing’s 737 Max planes would be grounded across the country, the aerospace company’s stock value plunged.
Shares of Boeing immediately fell 3% after Trump’s announcement. They later recovered to close slightly higher by the end of the day.
But since the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday, Boeing’s stock has lost more than 10% of its value, wiping out more than $25 billion of the company’s market value.
The black boxes from Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 are due to arrive in Paris for analysis on Thursday morning, a vital clue into what caused the Sunday crash which killed 157 people.
The French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) will conduct the investigation into the recorders but a spokesman for the bureau said they wouldn’t be announcing the results.
“Only the Ethiopian authorities will report on the progress of the investigation. There will be no press conference,” a BEA spokesman told CNN Wednesday.
Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde GebreMariam told CNN’s Richard Quest on Tuesday that Ethiopia did not have the necessary equipment to perform analysis tasks on its own and would work alongside external analysts.
Mexico became the 50th country to take action against Boeing 737 Max 8 planes on Wednesday evening, following the United States decision earlier in the day to suspend the planes’ operation inside the country.
The General Directorate of Civil Aviation said they were banned until further notice to “guarantee the safety and confidence” of aircraft flying in Mexican airspace.
Since China’s decision to ground its Boeing Max jets on Monday, more and more countries around the world have banned the use of Boeing 737 Max planes inside their airspace.
South Korea’s largest airline, Korean Air, announced Thursday it would be putting on hold plans to introduce Boeing 737 Max 8s into their fleet.
“Korean Air had originally scheduled to introduce the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircrafts to its (air) routes from May,” the statement said. Instead, the airline will use other planes in their place.
It is just another reminder of the economic cost of the worldwide ban to Boeing.
Wall Street firms Melius Research and Jefferies estimate a three-month grounding could cost the US aerospace company up to $5 billion.
China was the first country in the world to ground their fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8 planes on Monday, which set off a chain reaction around the world.
In an editorial Wednesday, state-run tabloid Global Times told Boeing it had to take “responsibility” for the crisis and reprimanded the US government for “protecting” them.
“Such protection of a company seems incredible to Chinese, yet in US society it seems to make sense thanks to the US political system,” the editorial said.
It’s a bold statement which might strike some observers as ironic given the Chinese government’s unequivocal statements in recent months supporting tech giant Huawei during its legal troubles with the US.
The article also praised Boeing as a “giant in the aerospace industry” but added it had to be “modest and cautious as any startup company” given the recent news.
Another country has joined the international pushback against Boeing and its 737 Max 8 aircraft, within hours of the US announcement.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand announced all operations of Max 8 and Max 9 planes would be temporarily suspended until midnight on March 20.
“Currently, there is no clear indication for the actual cause of accidents in Indonesia & Ethiopia, and no evident risk management measures or any mechanism to ensure the safety of 737 Max 9 aircraft from the aircraft manufacturer,” the statement said.
More than 40 countries have now suspended operations of the planes following the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302.
Dave Wasserman took this video of a United Airlines employee announcing to passengers the airline’s plan to ground its 737 Max 9 aircraft at George Bush Intercontinental Airport today.
Watch the moment:
Passenger Mort Greenberg was waiting at the gate in Miami on American Airlines Flight 2809 when the news broke that President Trump was grounding all Boeing Max 8 planes.
He was scheduled to fly on a Max 8 plane. His flight, however, has been canceled, according to American Airlines’ website.
“Airport staff were upfront and said that was reason. Moments later news came out about Presidents order. Entire terminal just cleared out. But in 5 minutes or so AA had send me a notice of rebooking without even having to ask,” Greenberg told CNN on Twitter.
Greenberg, who works in advertising sales, was supposed to be flying into LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and President Donald Trump spoke before the grounding announcement this afternoon, Boeing tells CNN.
Afterwards, Trump told reporters the move was more precautionary than mandatory.
“I didn’t want to take any chances. We didn’t have to make this decision today,” he said. “We could have delayed it. We maybe didn’t have to make it at all. But I felt it was important both psychologically and in a lot of other ways.”
Trump said his decision was fact-based, even as he admitted it was made partly with regard for the mental well-being of American travelers. “The safety of the American people, of all people, is our paramount concern,” Trump said.
The Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA) said it supported the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to order a temporary grounding of all Boeing 737 Max aircraft that are operated by US airlines or over US skies.
Meanwhile, the union said it would monitor the situation.
“We strongly encourage the investigative authorities responsible to expedite the investigation of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and identify any corrective action if necessary in order to return this aircraft to service,” the union said in a statement.
A flight attendant union said the decision to ground Boing 737 Max planes is “good news.”
Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, urged everyone to “focus on the needed fix, rather than the uncertainty of flight.”
Nelson continued: “We must be leaders in safety, always. We thank all who spoke up. Aviation workers will always stand up for safety. We have that ability and right through our union. It’s important to recognize the critical role unions play in raising issues, demanding the best of ourselves, of management, and government.”
The company that provided the satellite data that informed the FAA’s decision to ground Boeing’s Max 737 planes did so on Monday, according to Jessie Hillenbrand, director of Public Relations at Aireon.
Transport Canada received it Tuesday evening.
Hillenbrand said Aireon provided the data, which shows Ethiopian plane’s flight position data, to authorities who requested it. The company does not analyze the information, she said, they just provide it.
Hillenbrand said they don’t have any information about the crash itself. But the data sent shows the flight’s path as captured by satellites as it travels. She said the “aircraft transmits its position twice a second, our satellites catch it. We have caught that data in real time and provided that to authorities.”
American Airlines said it will comply with the order to ground its fleet of 24 Boeing 737 Max planes and it plans to rebook passengers.
“American Airlines has 24 aircraft affected by this directive,” the airline said.
Read the airline’s statement below:
Southwest Airlines said in a statement it is “aware of media reports stating that the Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet will be grounded in the United States.”
Southwest has the biggest fleet of the airplane with 34 in operation.
Speaking with reporters on a conference call, acting FAA Administrator Daniel Elwell said the grounding of the 737 Max 8 and 9 will remain in effect pending new information including from the flight data recorder and voice recorder.
“Since this accident occurred we were resolute that we would not take action until we had data,” Elwell said.
Elwell said the new data was “added fidelity – missing pieces that we did not have prior to today.” It aligned the Ethiopian flight data to the Lion Air incident.
Elwell declined to guess how long the grounding would last but he said he hoped to keep it “as short as possible.”
“I can’t and I don’t want to hazard a guess as to how long. My hope is that the FAA, the carriers, the manufacturer, that all parties will work very hard to make this grounding as short as possible so that these airplanes can get back up into the sky,” he said.
Update 4:06 p.m. ET: The FAA says the data “indicates some similarities” in its emergency order. See it:
The FAA tweeted that “new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today” impacted the agency’s decision to order a temporary grounding of all Boeing 737 Max aircraft that are operated by US airlines or over US skies.
In a second tweet the FAA said the order prohibiting the operation of Boeing’s 737-8 and 737-9 MAX airplanes was effective immediately.
Read the statement:
The US is the latest country to ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 jets, joining a list of more than 40 countries that have done so.
Here’s a look at where the jets are grounded:
Approximately 30 Boeing 737 Max airplanes were traveling in US airspace at the moment President Trump announced that they would, upon reaching their destinations, be grounded.
The above map, tweeted by Flightradar24, shows where they are located.
After nearly every country in the world determined that Boeing’s 737 Max airplane should be kept on the ground, Boeing finally relented on Wednesday afternoon and said, in a statement, that it would tell the FAA to ground its entire fleet.
It cited no additional findings or data, rather said the plane should be suspended “out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety.”
“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution. Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be,” Dennis Muilenburg, president of Boeing, said.
Boeing, the company said, makes this recommendation and supports the decision by the FAA.
President Trump said he spoke with a number of airlines as well, including American Airlines, before grounding the Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
He said he also worked closely with Canada and other countries. Trump said this was the best decision, “psychologically and in other ways.”
He said the FAA will be making an announcement within half an hour.
President Trump, speaking Wednesday afternoon at the White House, announced that the US would be issuing an “emergency order to ground all 737 Max 8 and the 737 Max 9, and planes associated with that line.”
He added that both the FAA and Boeing were “in agreement with the action,” and any planes currently in the air would continue to their destination where they will be grounded.
“Pilots have been notified, airlines have been all notified. Airlines are agreeing with this. The safety of the American people and all people is our paramount concern,” the President said.
Watch Trump’s announcement:
Air Canada, until this afternoon was one of a few carriers still flying the Boeing 737 Max, said it would follow Transport Canada’s safety notice that bans the plane from Canadian airspace and work to rebook its passengers on other available aircraft.
However, due to the size of its operation, customers should expect delays.
On Twitter, the airline added that anyone currently onboard a 737 Max can expect to continue to their destination.
Despite the actions of other aviation regulators worldwide, the Federal Aviation Administration sees no need to ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 fleet at this point because it believes the aircraft is operating as intended, according to a person familiar with the FAA deliberations.
“All of the data available tells us this airplane is performing to its certifications,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the non-public deliberations.
The source continued:
One note: The person spoke before Canadian authorities announced they had reviewed new tracking data and would ground the Max series.
The person’s comments clarified and echoed the statement from FAA Acting Administrator Daniel Elwell Tuesday evening. He said the FAA’s “review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft.”
Elsell also said the agency would take “immediate and appropriate action” if it learns new information.
A video animation created from Flightradar24 shows how Boeing Max 8 airplanes were grounded around the world in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines disaster.
A global grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max 8 airliner is drawing new attention to the close ties between the manufacturer and the Trump administration, which so far is refusing calls to join every other country in suspending use of the plane in the United States.
President Donald Trump has touted Boeing sales across the globe – including two weeks ago in Vietnam – and has cultivated close relationships with the company’s executives. His acting defense secretary served atop the company for more than three decades, including as the newly scrutinized planes were being developed. The company has spent millions over the past years lobbying decision-makers in Washington.
Now, as Boeing faces crumbling public confidence in one of its marquee products, those ties are being viewed in a new light. Even under increasing pressure from airline labor groups and lawmakers to take the planes out of use, the administration maintains the 737 Max 8 model remains safe to fly.
Trump spoke by phone Tuesday with CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who assured him the 737 Max 8 was safe, despite two recent crashes. Hours after the call – which was scheduled after a crash in Ethiopia killed 157 people – the Federal Aviation Administration said it remained confident in the planes, even as governments across Europe and Asia grounded them.
Helmed by an acting administrator for more than a year, the FAA finds itself the focus of congressional and public scrutiny for its role in inspecting and ensuring the safety of Boeing airplanes. Some US pilots who fly the Boeing 737 Max registered complaints about the way the jet has performed in flight, according to a federal database accessed by CNN.
Canada Minister of Transport Marc Garneau just announced that as the result of new data that they received this morning, they will no longer allow Boeing 737 Max 8 or 9 aircraft to take off and land or fly over Canadian airspace.
Flightradar24 tweeted a map showing at least six aircraft currently flying in Canada at the moment:
Iraq’s Civil Aviation Authority has banned Boeing 737 Max aircraft from entering the country’s airspace until further notice, due to technical and international restrictions using this type of aircraft.
Here’s the statement from the agency:
A software fix for the flight control system in the 737 Max aircraft was delayed, in part, by the 35-day federal government shutdown that began December 22, 2018 and lasted until January 25, 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported.
From the WSJ:
CNN reached out to Boeing and the company is declining to comment.
The “black box” data recorders recovered from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 will “definitely be going to Europe”, though they haven’t decided which country yet, says airline spokesman Asrat Begashaw to CNN.
A decision on exactly where the “black box” will go is expected Wednesday night or Thursday, Begashaw added.
When pressed about which “black box” or if he meant both black-box recorders, the Ethiopia Airlines spokesman did not differentiate between the two. Both the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recovered (CVR) were recovered at the start of the week, the airlines said in a statement issued Monday.
Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde GebreMariam told CNN’s Richard Quest on Tuesday that Ethiopia’s Ministry of Transport would work with the United States, where Boeing is based, to find a place outside the country to examine the black-box data. Ethiopia does not have the necessary equipment to perform those tasks on its own, GebreMariam added.
The nature of the black-box recorders cannot be overstated, says CNN’s Richard Quest. “The single most impart part of the investigation at the moment is the black boxes, because they have the answer to what happened.”
Quest also highlights that Ethiopian Airlines have not yet spoken out about the condition of the black boxes.
European discount carrier Norwegian Air is seeking compensation from Boeing for its grounded fleet of 737 Max 8 jets.
Why this matters: Norwegian is the first airline to say publicly it will demand that Boeing pay for lost flight time. It is expected other airlines will follow suit.
Norwegian has eighteen 737 Max 8 planes in its fleet, mostly for trans-Atlantic flights between Europe and the East Coast of the United States. The airline has ordered more than 100 of the 737 Max 8 planes.
“It is quite obvious we will not take the cost related to the new aircraft that we have to park temporarily,” said Norwegian CEO Bjørn Kjos in a recorded message to customers.
Kjos apologized to customers affected by the grounding of the planes and said passengers would be taken care of by combining flights, reallocating aircraft and rebooking customers on other airlines. He said Norwegian lost just 1% of the airline’s seat capacity because of the grounding, and he hoped the planes would be back in the air soon.
Boeing’s 737 Max 8 is operating in an ever-shrinking geographic area as country after country has grounded the plane or banned it from flying overhead. And this map shows what’s left.
Earlier this morning, there were just 33 of the airplanes spotted on Flightradar24, a popular flight tracker.
The vast majority of them were in the US, over its waters, or in the Caribbean.
And they are being operated by just four carriers – American Airlines, Air Canada, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines – all of them headquartered in North America.
The FAA maintains it has found no systematic performance issues that would provide a basis to order grounding the aircraft, nor have any of its civil aviation partners around the world. “If any issues affecting the continued airworthiness of the aircraft are identified, the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action,” Acting FAA Administrator Daniel K. Elwell said Tuesday night.
VietJet says it will wait for Vietnam’s aviation authority to make a conclusion on the Boeing 737 Max before deciding if it will use the 200 planes it recently purchased.
Some background: In February, Vietjet inked a $12.7 billion deal with Boeing for 100 737 Max planes which was witnessed by President Trump and Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong as part of a bilateral summit in Hanoi.
In a press release dated Feb. 27, VietJet said the company had signed a previous order in 2016 for 100 Boeing 737 Max jets, bringing the total of planes on order to 200.
VietJet released a statement on its Facebook page Wednesday saying that it is closely monitoring the accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAA) announced it would not grant new license for the use of Being 737 Max aircraft and had neutralized the current licenses.
Multiple airlines and dozens of countries have grounded Boeing 737 Max 8s following Sunday’s deadly crash in Ethiopia.
But not all Max 8s are out of the air. Here’s a look at who is still flying Max aircraft:
Pilots in the US formally complained at least five times about the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, according to reports and complaints obtained by CNN.
The complaints are part of a federal database to which pilots can anonymously send complaints. The identity and airlines of the pilots are unclear. CNN has approached the FAA for comment.
Some of the pilots logged complaints about unintended nose-down situations while flying the Max 8 jet, which has now been involved in two deadly crashes in less than six months.
One wrote that they turned autopilot on, and “within two to three seconds the aircraft pitched nose down,” causing the plane’s safety system to sound the warning “Don’t sink, don’t sink.”
Last year, a Lion Air Max 8 plane crashed after it was automatically sent into a nose dive because the plane’s system detected it was in danger of stalling, investigators said. The pilots engaged in a futile tug-of-war with the plane, attempting to revert the nose dive.
Travel site Kayak announced that it will allow customers to filter trips by aircraft model, according to Kayak CTO Giorgos Zacharia.
Zacharia said the company is releasing the enhancement this week and is “committed to providing our customers with all the information they need to travel with confidence.”
Here’s the full statement:
Airlines and governments around the world have grounded the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft after it was involved in its second deadly crash in five months. But a critical question still faces carriers: what to do with their outstanding orders for the MAX 8 jet?
Nigerian airline Air Peace, which placed orders for 10 new Boeing 737 MAX 8s, says it is “premature” to decide on whether to cancel the purchase, a spokesman for the airline told CNN.
Air Peace Airlines spokesperson Chris Iwarah told CNN the airline was following investigations into the latest crash before it decided on its order.
The airline had ordered the new aircraft before the Ethiopian Airlines crash, he said. Air Peace Airlines said in a statement it had yet to take delivery of the planes, and it was still in early talks with Boeing about the design and other specification of the aircraft.
There were 350 MAX 8 jets in operation around the world at the time of the crash on Sunday – but Boeing had orders for another 4,661, according to company records. What happens to those orders remains to be seen.