Canada won’t ground Boeing 737 Max 8s despite moves by European Union, Asian and Middle Eastern countries Social Sharing

Plane has ‘no systemic performance issues’: acting head of U.S. aviation authority.
Civil aviation authorities and airlines have grounded more than 40 per cent of the world’s in-service fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8s — the type of jet involved in an Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people, including 18 Canadians.
But even after the entire European Union, Australia and others decided to suspend the jet from their airspace Tuesday, Transport Minister Marc Garneau reiterated that Canada has no plans to follow suit.
The U.S. is also allowing the jet to continue to fly. On Tuesday evening, the Federal Aviation Administration’s acting administrator Dan Elwell said its “review shows no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft.” He added that no foreign civil aviation authorities have “provided data to us that would warrant action.”
Grounded across Europe
Sunday’s disaster — following another fatal crash of a 737 Max 8 jet in Indonesia five months ago — has caused alarm in the international aviation industry and wiped billions of dollars off the market value of the world’s biggest plane-maker.
Earlier Tuesday, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued a directive grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 model aircraft following two recent deadly crashes. The grounding applies to all European Union airspace, plus that of Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.
EASA said in its emergency airworthiness directive that “at this early stage” of the most recent investigation, “it cannot be excluded that similar causes may have contributed to both events.”
It said “based on all available information, EASA considers that further actions may be necessary to ensure the continued airworthiness of the two affected models.”
The United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Oman also joined the list of countries that have banned all flights into or out of their countries.
Ethiopian Airlines and all Chinese airlines grounded their Max 8 planes indefinitely immediately after the crash Sunday. Ethiopian has four of the planes remaining in its fleet and was awaiting delivery of 25 more. China has 96 Max 8 jets in service.
Source: cbc.ca