Number of countries grounding Boeing 737 Max 8 jets grows

Reuters: More and more countries have made the move to ground the Boeing 737 Max 8, and the number may still grow following the plane crash in Ethiopia on Sunday. The Ethiopian Airlines (ET) aircraft ET 302, a Boeing 737-800 MAX, took off at 08:38 local time from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport and was scheduled to arrive in Nairobi, Kenya at 10:25. It lost contact at 08:44, and then crashed near Bishoftu, killing all 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard. It was the second deadly crashes that this model was involved in within less than six months. A Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia last year on October 29, killing 189 people. On Tuesday, the European aviation regulators have joined countries in Asia and Latin America in grounding the aircraft. Although there are growing calls by the public, politicians and flight attendant unions to ground the planes in the United States, US officials and Boeing maintain the aircraft is safe to fly. Boeing and American civil aviation investigators have joined in Ethiopia's search for answers in the debris at the scene of the crash site. In a statement regarding Boeing 737 Max 8, Boeing says "safety is Boeing's number one priority", said they "have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX." Dennis Culloton, CEO of Culloton Strategies, a company that specializes in crisis management feels that Boeing should have taken a more pro-active approach in this critical period for the company and remind everybody about who they are as a company and their safety principles. "They are working behind the scenes to get to the bottom of what went wrong, if anything, with their aircraft. But the problem is they are also keeping that very confidential, very behind the scenes. And I think that they are missing out on an opportunity or a necessity to communicate with the flying public, their ultimate customers, their customers and the markets, and using this moment of truth as an opportunity to remind everybody that this is what we stand for," he said.