IANS | 09 Nov, 2019
US's Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have announced to ground the Boeing 737 aircraft until March 2020.
Southwest
Airlines said on Friday that it would eliminate all Boeing 737 Max
aircraft from its flight schedule until March 6, which will delay the
return of the plane to normal service for longer than any other US
carrier, while American Airlines will do the same until March 5, reports
Efe news.
Southwest previously said that it would ground the
model until February 8, 2020 while American Airlines had cut Max 737s
until January 15.
The model was globally grounded after crashes
of two Max 737s - Lion Air flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian
Airlines flight 302 in March 2019 - killed 346 people.
The
Southwest Airlines fleet consists entirely of Boeing 737s and has had to
cancel thousands of flights as a result of the grounding.
It is
the largest customer of the aircraft in the US with 34 in its fleet and
200 orders pending when air authorities made the decision not to allow
the planes to fly in the wake of the two fatal accidents.
At the
end of October, documents emerged that detailed engineers expressing
concern about the faulty Max 737 MCAS flight-control system before the
two crashes.
The accidents plunged the aeronautical company into
a crisis, with the wide ban on the planes interrupting deliveries of
Max 737s as well as the operations of numerous airlines.
