TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi/ The Civil Aviation Secretary has called an emergency meeting of all airlines at 4 pm today in Delhi. In a late night move, all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft were grounded, a senior official of Indian aviation watchdog DGCA, said in the backdrop of Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 plane crash near Addis Ababa killing 157 people, including four Indians, on Sunday.
“We will ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, which are currently in use by Indian airlines, by 4 pm today,” the DGCA official said on Wednesday morning. SpiceJet has around 12 such aircraft in its fleet. Jet Airways has five, which have been grounded already. In a statement on Wednesday, SpiceJet said,” SpiceJet has suspended Boeing 737 Max operations following DGCA’s decision to ground the aircraft.”
“Safety and security of our passengers, crew and operations are of utmost importance to us and we will be working with the regulator and the manufacturer to attain normalcy in our operations. “We are confident of accommodating the vast majority of our passengers and minimise inconvenience,” the airline said. The Ethiopian Airlines incident on Sunday was the second such crash involving a Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in less than five months.
