Late on tuesday night, India's DGCA ordered Indian operators, SpiceJet and Jet Airways to ground all its B737Max8 aircrafts before 04PM Wednesday. The planes will stay grounded till further safety measures are undertaken to ensure their safe operations, the Civil Aviation Ministry announced on Tuesday evening.
DGCA's decision comes after a number of countries grounded their Max aircrafts. The country has also banned overflying of Boeing 737 Max in its airspace from 4 pm on Wednesday, the same time by which SpiceJet has to ground its planes. This is the second fatal accident involving Max8 aircrafts in a gap of five months. In October, a Lion Air 737Max8 crashed into sea soon after takeoff killing all onboard.
Local authorities and Boeing, had launched investigation to find the exact cause for the fatal crash. US Authorities asked Boeing to make urgent improvements on their Max8 products. European Union Aviation Safety Agency , shuts down its airspace to Max8 aircrafts due to the fatal accident.
Boeing announced overnight that the company would release a software update for its 737 Max planes “no later” than next month. The announcement, which was posted to Boeing’s website , calls the software release an “enhancement”. Both the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines crash occurred with the 737 Max-8 airplane, but Boeing’s software update appears to be for all planes in the Max line. There’s concern among aviation experts that the two crashes may be related to automation of flight control systems in the plane, but the investigation into what caused Sunday’s crash is still in its early stages.
The Boeing announcement insists that pilots are “always” able to override erroneous automation, something that has been a chief concern for those investigating the Lion Air crash. It’s believed that the plane may have pushed its own nose down too far in an effort not to stall and that the pilot was unable to correct for the false reading.