Jamaican Civil Aviation Agency Restricts Operations Of Boeing 737 MAX After Ethiopia Crash

Fakhir Rizvi Published March 14, 2019 | 08:20 AM

Jamaica's Civil Aviation Authority said it had decided to temporarily restrict the operations of Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 aircraft within or into Jamaica's airspace after the two recent deadly accidents involving the plane series

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th March, 2019) Jamaica's Civil Aviation Authority said it had decided to temporarily restrict the operations of Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 aircraft within or into Jamaica's airspace after the two recent deadly accidents involving the plane series.

On Sunday, an Ethiopian Airlines' Boeing 737 MAX crashed minutes after its takeoff from Addis Ababa. All 157 people on board the plane were killed. Moreover, last October, Boeing 737 MAX of Indonesia's Lion Air crashed killing 189 people.

"At the effective date and time of this Directive operations of the affected aircraft models shall be temporarily restricted out of, within or into Jamaica airspace until further notice. Operators that would have operated into Jamaica before receiving this Directive are hereby allowed to operate one non-commercial (ferry) flight to re-position their aircraft," the agency said in a directive published on Twitter on Wednesday.

On the same day, Panama's air carrier Copa Airlines decided to temporarily suspend the operation of its MAX 9 fleet.

"Along with the Civil Aviation Authority of Panama and in accordance with developments of the ongoing investigation, Copa Airlines has decided to immediately and temporarily suspend operations of its six MAX 9 airplanes until the cause of the accident is known," the company said in a statement published on Twitter.

The situation around Boeing 737 MAX prompted dozens of countries to either ground the plane series or close their airspace to the planes.

Boeing, in its turn, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had "full confidence" in the safety of its 737 MAX aircraft but supported the decision to temporarily ground the entire fleet of 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 series planes in the wake of the deadly crash in Ethiopia.