Nigeria’s AirPeace and its fleet supplier Boeing Co. are grappling with increased pressure following more groundings of Boeing’s most important airliner as operators from Brazil to South Korea idled the 737 Max following a second deadly crash.
Nigeria’s leading carrier Airpeace has ordered several of ten of the planes last year in a partnership with Boeing which has now been thrown deep into crisis.
In a sign that the tragedy in Ethiopia, which killed everyone on board, threatens to become a commercial fiasco for Boeing, launch customer Lion Air is said to be considering a complete switch to Airbus SE planes, a person familiar with the discussions said, with the carrier suspending further 737 Max deliveries this year.
After China became the first major market on Monday to halt take-offs and landings of Boeing’s latest single-aisle model, flight halts quickly cascaded around the globe.
Singapore barred all 737 Max service in and out of the city-state, a move that was followed by Australia and Malaysia as well as the United Kingdom.
Elsewhere in Asia, a South Korean carrier suspended its 737 Max planes, while two airlines in Latin American also halted operations of the jet, which entered service just a few years ago and has become Boeing’s fastest-selling aircraft, with nearly 4,700 orders. The suspensions have put about a third of the 350-strong global fleet out of action.
The fallout from the crash has weighed on Boeing’s stock. The shares slumped 5.3 percent on Monday and fell another 3.6 percent before the start of regular trading Tuesday in the U.S., as investors weighed the backlash against an aircraft that
While the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders have been recovered from the crash site, little is know at this point about the final fateful moments of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which was en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya, with 157 people on board. Africa’s largest carrier took delivery of its first 737 Max at the end of June as part of an upgrade of its fleet, which also includes Boeing’s twin-aisle 787 Dreamliner and the larger 777 model.
