Iraq bans Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from its airspace
Boeing 737 MAX. Photo: Courtesy of Stephen McParlin/Flickr
BAGHDAD,— Iraq on Wednesday banned U.S. planemaker Boeing Co’s 737 MAX aircraft from entering or transiting its airspace, a statement from the civil aviation authority said.
It said the decision was based on air safety concerns.
The ban will also affect the airspace over Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani International Airport on Thursday confirmed it had grounded the US Boeing 737 MAX aircraft from entering or traveling from its airspace, K24 TV reported.
A statement from the airport’s administration said the decision to block the passage of the Boeing 737 MAX was made after the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority informed it to implement the ban.
The move comes after a 737 MAX crashed in Ethiopia on Sunday killing 157 people. Another disaster involving a 737 MAX in Indonesia five months ago killed 189 people.
The European Union’s aviation safety regulator on Tuesday suspended all flights in the bloc by Boeing 737 MAX.
Britain, Germany and France joined a wave of suspensions of the aircraft in the wake of Sunday’s crash, and was swiftly followed by a similar decision by India and Japan.
The United States grounded Boeing Co’s money-spinning 737 MAX aircraft on Wednesday over safety fears after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash, leaving the world’s largest planemaker facing its worst crisis in years.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (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 new information from the wreckage in Ethiopia and newly refined data about the plane’s flight path indicated some similarities between the two disasters “that warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause,” the FAA said in a statement.
The acting administrator of the FAA, Daniel Elwell, said he did not know how long the U.S. 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 told reporters.
The single-aisle 737 is central to Boeing’s future in its battle with European rival Airbus SE. 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 U.S. President Donald Trump announced the planes would be grounded.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | Reuters
Comments