Boeing has announced it is going to cut down production of its best-selling 737 Airliner temporarily in the continuing fall-out from crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia. The production will drop from 52 planes a month to 42 from mid-April, Boeing noted in a statement, reported BBC.
The announcement comes after the 737 Max model was found involved in two different accidents. An Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed just minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in March, killing all 157 people on board. The same type of aircraft flown by the Indonesian airline Lion Air crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta. The accident claimed the lives of 189 people.
The plane’s safety is currently in question as preliminary findings of the crash incidents suggest its anti-stall system was at fault. The findings showed the pilots had wrestled with the anti-stall system, known as MCAS, which caused the planes to nose-dive repeatedly.
Boeing installed the powerful new anti-stall system on the 737 Max claiming that it insisted that pilots could deal with any problems by following a checklist of emergency procedures.
The Ethiopian authorities issued an official statement on Thursday which said that the pilots of flight ET302 followed all the procedures recommended by Boeing after the anti-stall system malfunctioned.
Boeing also issued its response on Thursday in a statement that admitted technical errors whiles promising a robust series of steps going forward.
“We now know that the recent Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft’s MCAS function,” the statement released by Boieng Chairman, president and CEO , Dennis Muilenburg, read. “We have the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it.”
Meanwhile, Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of the National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT), has announced the agency will send two investigators to Ethiopia to assist in investigation in the two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAX jets.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore on Friday announced that it would participate in the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) technical review panel on the Boeing Co 737 MAX.
