Chicago sources reported that Boeing is temporarily cutting production of its best selling 737 airliner in the continuing fall-out from crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia. Reportedly Boeing said the production will drop from 52 planes a month to 42 from mid-April. Meanwhile the decision is a response to a halt in deliveries of the 737 Max the model involved in the two accidents.
Currently the plane is grounded as preliminary findings suggest its anti-stall system was at fault. Furthermore an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed only minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in March, killing all 157 people on board. Recently Indonesian airline Lion Air crashed into the sea only five months earlier, which claimed lives of 189 people. Further in both cases, preliminary findings showed the pilots had wrestled with the anti-stall system, known as MCAS, which caused the planes to nose-dive repeatedly.
Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg said "We now know that the recent Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft's MCAS function. We have the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it". Moreover he repeated that Boeing was making progress on updating the MCAS software and finalizing new training for Max pilots.
