Canada has grounded all of its Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft and banned the jet from its airspace, citing new satellite data from the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed the 157 people on board, Transport Minister Marc Garneau announced Wednesday. “This safety notice restricts commercial passenger flights from any air operator, both domestic and foreign, of the Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft from arriving, departing, or overflying Canadian airspace,” Garneau said. The minister said the decision was made after his department received new data suggesting the recent crash and the Lion Air incident in October that killed 189 people were similar. “My departmental officials continue to monitor the situation and I will not hesitate to take swift action should we discover any additional safety issues,” Garneau said.
Canada had been one of the last holdouts on banning the model. The U.S. has yet to ground any planes; instead, the U.S. gave Boeing a deadline of April to complete unannounced changes to the aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration has said its review thus far showed “no systemic performance issues and provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft.” But pilots reportedly voiced safety concerns about the model to federal authorities months before the Ethiopian crash. The U.K., European Union, Australia, and other countries have already barred the jet.