A South Korean airline says it will suspend operations of its two Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, the same aircraft involved in the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash that killed 157 people.
An Eastar Jet official said on Tuesday that the planes will be replaced by Boeing 737-800 planes from Wednesday on routes to Japan and Thailand. She didn’t want to be named, citing office rules.
She says the airline hasn’t found any problems, but is voluntarily grounding Boeing 737 Max 8s in a response to customer concerns. She says the planes will not be used until the completion of a government safety review on the aircraft.
An official from South Korea’s Transportation Ministry says it has yet to find any problems from safety reviews on Eastar’s planes that started on Monday.
The Mideast budget airline FlyDubai says it will continue to fly Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft after reviewing a recent US regulator statement about the aircraft.
FlyDubai says that “no further action is required at this time” over the aircraft, a workhorse in the Dubai government-owned carrier’s fleet.
