Boeing grounds all 737 Max - cites evidence found on ground an- BBC
 

Boeing has grounded its entire global fleet of 737 Max aircraft after investigators uncovered new evidence at the scene of the fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash.

The US plane-maker said it would suspend all 371 of the aircraft.

The Federal Aviation Administration said fresh evidence as well as newly refined satellite data prompted the decision to temporarily ban the jets.

The FAA had previously held out while many countries banned the aircraft.

All 157 passengers and crew died in Sunday's crash. Ethiopian Airlines said on Thursday that the black box flight recorders from the aircraft have been flown to Paris for analysis.

"An Ethiopian delegation led by Accident Investigation Bureau has flown the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder to Paris, France for investigation," the airline wrote on Twitter.

What has the FAA discovered?

The FAA has a team investigating the disaster at the Ethiopian Airlines crash site working with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Dan Elwell, acting administrator at the FAA, said on Wednesday: "It became clear to all parties that the track of the Ethiopian Airlines [flight] was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight."

He added that "the evidence we found on the ground made it even more likely the flight path was very close to Lion Air's".

Aside from satellite data on flight path, they might have found the stab trim jackscrew, indicating last trim position. Photos from Atlas 767 thread show that it can survive this sort of impact.

They could have found the horizontal stabilizer jack screw in a very much nose down position....

It sounds like an excuse to me. Always easier to say 'based on new information' rather than 'we changed our minds because we were wrong / based on political pressure'

Bonzo777:

Release of FDR and CVR data is up to the agency in charge of the investigation, not Boeing, and in this case, not the NTSB.