Trump Says Hopes Grounding Of Boeing MAX Jets Will Be Short

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he hopes the emergency order to ground all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 jets in the United States will not last long

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th March, 2019) US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he hopes the emergency order to ground all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 jets in the United States will not last long.

"I hope it's going to be for a short period of time," Trump told reporters at the White House. "The biggest thing is they have to find out what it is."

Trump underscored that Boeing is under "great pressure" now, but the decision to ban the 737MAX airplane form the US airspace was necessary.

The United States was one of the last major holdouts in allowing the Boeing 737 MAX planes to continue flying, insisting as late as Tuesday that the aircraft was safe. By then, at least 40 other nations, including China and the 28-nation European Union, had grounded Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes until further notice.

On Sunday, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing all 157 people from more than 30 countries on board.

The crash in Ethiopia was the second fatal incident involving the narrow-body aircraft in less than five months. In late October 2018, another Boeing 737 MAX 8, operated by Indonesia's Lion Air, plunged into the Java Sea shortly after take-off, claiming the lives of 189 people. According to the preliminary investigation, the plane's sensors were showing incorrect speed and altitude readings.