Australia, Singapore join list of countries grounding newest 737s

Australia and Singapore announced Tuesday that they would ground all new Boeing 737 Max airliners after a second deadly crash involving one of the passenger jets killed 157 people.

Reuters reported that aviation officials in Australia and Singapore joined their counterparts in China, Indonesia and other nations in halting flights of the aircraft in the wake of a fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday.

{mosads}The U.S. has refused to join the list of countries so far, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reportedly issuing a  “continued airworthiness notification” on the aircraft that detailed Boeing’s response to a previous crash in Indonesia, which took place in October and resulted in 189 deaths.

Canada’s transportation minister, Marc Garneau, meanwhile warned that his country would take action once the cause of Sunday’s crash was known.

The latest accident, which occurred on a flight between Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya, occurred shortly after takeoff and is still under investigation.

“There are no survivors onboard the flight, which carried passengers from 33 countries,” an Ethiopian state news service reported.

“My prayers go to all the families and associates of those on board,” Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a statement Sunday.

A former FAA accident investigator told Reuters that it was premature for officials in other countries to ground the Boeing 737 based on the two fatal crashes.

“To me it’s almost surreal how quickly some of the regulators are just grounding the aircraft without any factual information yet as a result of the investigation,” Mike Daniel told the news service.