JAKARTA, March 12 — Indonesia’s Lion Air said today it was postponing taking delivery of four new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets after the latest crash involving the aircraft.
The low-cost carrier — Southeast Asia’s biggest airline by fleet size and a major Boeing customer — said the jets had been on order for delivery this year, but the company is now re-evaluating the situation.
“We will evaluate the planes which were supposed to be delivered this year and for the moment will not take them,” Lion Air’s Managing Director Daniel Putut Kuncoro Adi told AFP.
On Sunday an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 went down minutes into a flight to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.
It came after a Lion Air jet of the same model crashed in Indonesia in October, killing all 189 people on board.
The Lion Air announcement comes a day after Indonesia said it was grounding 11 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets from today, and that the plane would remain grounded until it was cleared by safety regulators.
Lion Air currently operates 10 Max 8 jets, part of a then-record US$22 billion (RM 89.9 billion) order from Boeing made in 2011.
The other Max 8 is flown by national carrier Garuda. — AFP
