US President Donald Trump speaks about the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max by the FAA March 13, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photos: VCG)

US President Trump said on Wednesday the Federal Aviation Administration would ground Boeing Co.’s fleet of 737 MAX airliners after agency officials said new data indicated last weekend’s deadly crash in Ethiopia in some ways resembled another recent tragedy involving the same plane model.

(Screenshot from the official website of the FAA)

Since China's decision to ground its Boeing Max jets on Monday, more and more countries around the world have banned the use of Boeing 737 Max planes inside their airspace. 

Graphic: CNN

In total, 50 countries have now grounded or banned the controversial Max 8 models which were involved in the Ethiopian Airlines crash Sunday.

File photo of Democrat Peter DeFazio

The chairman of the US House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Democrat Peter DeFazio, called for a probe into why the 737 Max received certification to fly.

“There must be a rigorous investigation into why the aircraft, which has critical safety systems that did not exist on prior models, was certified without requiring additional pilot training,” he said.

The company logo and trading informations for Boeing is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 13, 2019.

Shares of Boeing (BA) fell 3 percent immediately after President Donald Trump announced the move from the White House.

The shares then rebounded in a sign that the grounding had been largely priced in to Boeing's stock. But even after ending Wednesday slightly higher, the stock is still down more than 10 percent since the crash, wiping more than $25 billion off the company's market value.

File photo of Norwegian Air aircraft

European discount carrier Norwegian Air is seeking compensation from Boeing for its grounded fleet of 737 Max 8 jets.

Norwegian is the first airline to say publicly it will demand that Boeing pay for lost flight time. It is expected other airlines will follow suit.

The Boeing 737 MAX is the fastest-selling plane in company history. Now two of the planes have crashed since October.

A new Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 went down minutes into a flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on Sunday, killing all 157 people on board. That followed the October crash of a new Lion Air jet of the same model in Indonesia, which killed 189 people shortly after takeoff from Jakarta.

A preliminary investigation shows that pilots in the Lion Air crash struggled to get control of the plane after the nose was forced down by an automatic safety feature. The CEO of Ethiopian Airlines said his pilots also were reporting problems controlling the plane before the crash.

File photo of the October crash of the Lion Air jet

The widening action against the aircraft has put pressure on Boeing to prove the 737 MAX is safe, and the company has said it is rolling out flight software updates by April that could address issues with a faulty sensor.

At the heart of the controversy surrounding the 737 MAX is MCAS or the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation system. To fit the MAX's larger, more fuel-efficient engines, Boeing had to redesign the way it mounts engines on the 737. This change disrupted the plane's center of gravity and caused the MAX to have a tendency to tip its nose upward during flight, increasing the likelihood of a stall. MCAS is designed to automatically counteract that tendency and point the nose of the plane downward. Unfortunately, initial reports from the Lion Air investigation indicate that a faulty sensor reading may have triggered MCAS shortly after the flight took off.

Thomas Anthony, head of the Aviation Safety and Security Program at the University of Southern California, said increasing automation of planes means crews have less experience flying manually. "So it's not just a mechanical, it is not just a software problem, but it is a problem of communication and trust," he said.

Although the 737 MAX 8 is an upgraded version of Boeing's best-selling model, it was only put into use in 2017. The international-wide grounding has little effect on the normal operation of the civil aviation system.

However, Boeing may face sales cancellation on global scale. Boeing had a total of 5,011 737 Max 8 orders, including 4,661 of them as a backlog, as of January 31 this year, according Aerotime.aero portal. With a minimum of $99.97 million per aircraft in the Max series, Max's full line of undelivered orders is at least $464.7 billion.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, said: "Lives must come first always. But a brand is at stake as well. And that brand is not just Boeing. It's America. What America means in international aviation and by extension in the larger world more generally—that we set the standard for safety, competence, and honesty in governance of aviation.

(Source: CNN, AFP, Global Times, Business Insider, The Straits Times, New Straits Times, Cankaoxiaoxi，Suibinanyang WeChat Official Account;

Compiled by He Jieqiong and Zhu Yurou)