Only a “Chance Encounter” Led to Canada's Boeing MAX-8 Grounding in 2019
Despite two deadly crashes and a slew of countries taking action, Canada’s decision to ground Boeing’s 737 MAX-8 jets in 2019 came as a result of a chance encounter that led to new data that finally convinced Ottawa to act, Global News reports.
Canada was one of the last countries to ground the MAX-8 after an Ethiopian Airlines crash on 10MAR 2019 killed 157 people, including 18 Canadians. That disaster came five months after a MAX-8 crashed off the coast of Indonesia, killing 189 people.
The Trudeau government banned the Boeing planes from Canadian skies on 13MAR 2019, but Global says newly-released documents obtained through access to information laws show the decision came just hours before the announcement, “the result of what appeared to be a coincidental meeting that provided new data showing similarities between the two crashes.”
The story again raises quality control issues about Boeing at a time when the U.S. company is undergoing intense scrutiny over a series of mishaps, including a door panel that flew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing jet in January of this year.
Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour, recently told a U.S. Senate panel that he’s been threatened for bringing safety concerns to his managers over the years. He told senators he believes Boeing is “putting out defective airplanes.”
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun recently said he’ll step down from the embattled company at the end of the year as part of a wider management shuffle. The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority also has stepped up its scrutiny of Boeing.
Global’s story about the 2019 grounding of the Boeing MAX-8 says Transport Canada was carefully weighing the idea of a ban on the airplane in Canadian airspace after the Ethiopia and Indonesia crashes, and that there seemed to be considerable doubt that the two incidents were linked.
The network says a senior Transport Canada official sent an email on 12MAR 2019 – less than 24 hours before the Canadian ban was announced - to say that Canadian aviation experts “found no reason to ground the fleet.”
But just nine hours later, a pair of employees at NAV Canada, the non-profit group that runs Canada’s civil air navigation system, sent word that a U.S. company had important data about the two crashes. The employees were attending a conference in Europe when they found out that that the European Union had grounded the MAX-8 based on information compiled from a U.S.-based aircraft tracking company called Aireon.
The NAV Canada workers put Aireon’s vice president in touch with senior Transport Canada officials, Global says, and Aireon passed along critical information around 6 a.m. Ottawa time on 13MAR, 2019.
A few minutes later, a top Transport Canada official wrote an email saying that, indeed, there appeared to be similarities between the Ethiopia and Indonesia crashes.
Five hours later, then Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau held a press conference to say the MAX-8 was being grounded in Canada, Global reports.
The U.S. followed suit the same day.
Investigators later said the Indonesia and Ethiopia crashes were due to problems with Boeing’s anti-stall software, which was causing the nose of some planes to dive downward under certain conditions.
After a nearly two-year review of the plane, Canadian authorities cleared the MAX 8 to fly again in JAN, 2021.
