Europe’s aviation safety regulator issued a continent-wide ban on flights of Boeing’s 737 Max on Tuesday, putting both the aircraft manufacturer and US regulators on the defensive as they continued to insist the plane was airworthy.
The move by the EU Aviation Safety Agency followed similar actions on Tuesday by Australia, Singapore and Malaysia to bar the aircraft from their airspace; some individual airlines — including Norwegian Air, one of the Max 8’s biggest customers — had unilaterally grounded their fleet even before authorities acted.
The groundings come despite Boeing and the US Federal Aviation Administration, the official certifying authority for the 737 Max, standing by the aircraft, with both insisting there is insufficient evidence to link Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash with another accident involving the Max 8 in Indonesia five months ago. Both were new planes that went down shortly after take-off.