Morocco’s national carrier Royal Air Maroc has suspended a deal to buy two more Boeing 737 MAX planes after the same model of aircraft crashed in Ethiopia, a source from the airline told Reuters on Thursday.
The carrier had planned to receive the two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in June, the source said, adding that two other Boeing 737 Max planes in the carrier’s fleet had been grounded pending findings of an investigation into the Ethiopian crash in March.
This comes even as American Airlines Group extended cancellations of Boeing 737 MAX flights through January 15, running contrary to the U.S. plane maker’s promises that the grounded jets would be flying again before the year-end.
American Airlines, which canceled 9,475 flights in the third quarter, said it expects to gradually resume MAX flights starting January 16, adding that software updates could lead to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “re-certification of the aircraft later this year and resumption of commercial service in January 2020.”
The fast-selling 737 MAX has been grounded worldwide since mid-March while Boeing updates flight control software at the center of two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that together killed 346 people within a span of five months.
