I thought they were grounded?

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by patplan

It's just a flight to ferry the plane to its "storage" place while the grounding still takes effect.

But, there's A HUGE ELEPHANT in the room. The Max 8 engine, CFM Leap-1B, seems to have been failing in a very alarming rate lately...

Incidents of MAX 8 engines failure as compiled by AVHERALD:

Incident: Southwest B38M at Orlando on Mar 26th 2019, engine shut down in flight
Incident: TUI B38M near Chania on Jan 29th 2019, engine problem
Incident: Spicejet B38M near Varanasi on Jan 6th 2019, engine shut down in flight
Incident: Norwegian B38M near Shiraz on Dec 14th 2018, engine shut down in flight

Are these incidents are simply showing a normal "growing pain" for this new type of engine CFM Leap-1B?? Or, it shows a major problem with its reliability/durability??

There were over 300 MAX aircraft in service prior to the grounding. Figure an average of 300 hours per month per aircraft, two engines per aircraft, that roughs out to 180,000 engine operating hours per month.
I doubt anyone is going to get to0 excited over ~1 shutdown per 180,000 hours on a new engine type. That's pretty good rate for a mature engine type..