Boeing shares fell more than 5 percent on Monday, a day after a new Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane crashed shortly after takeoff and killed all 157 people on board.
The incident was the second fatal crash of the manufacturer’s best-selling aircraft in less than five months.
China’s civil aviation regulator on Monday told domestic airlines to temporarily ground the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets, a move later echoed by Indonesia, a rare measure. Cayman Airways and Ethiopian Airlines said they, too, would take the planes out of service temporarily.
But the Federal Aviation Administration later on Monday said it does not have any reason to ground the planes, providing a vote of confidence to the planes whose recent crashes have rattled travelers as well as some carriers and some airline employees.
U.S. airlines with this model of plane in their fleets, including American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, on Monday scrambled to assure customers who became worried after the two crashes that the jets are safe.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after takeoff for Nairobi from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Sunday. In a notice posted on its website, China’s aviation regulator said the crash was similar to that of Lion Air Flight 610, another Boeing 737 MAX 8, which went down in the Java Sea in October, minutes after departing Jakarta.
Boeing shares lost 5.3 percent to close at $400.01, recovering from a more than 13 percent decline earlier in the day. Even including the day’s decline, Boeing’s stock is up 24 percent so far this year, making it the biggest gainer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Investigators on Monday were looking for clues in what brought down Ethiopian Airlines’ 4-month-old plane. The so-called black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings were recovered, the airline said.