Russian budget airline drops orders for Boeing 737 MAX airliners after planes crashed & killed hundreds sparking safety fears

The head of popular Russian budget airline Pobeda has revealed that it has canceled its contract for the troubled Boeing 737 MAX plane, a month after it was rumored that the company had pulled out of an agreement to buy twenty.

Speaking to news agency RIA Novosti, CEO Andrey Kalmykov confirmed that it had opted to cancel the deals and would not be forced to pay a penalty. The airline agreed to buy the planes in 2019.

Boeing 737 MAX flights were suspended worldwide March 2019 when Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed, killing 157 people. Prior to that, in October 2018, 189 people died when an Indonesian Lion Air 747 MAX fell into the sea. In both cases, Boeing admitted that there was a malfunction in the airliner’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

On July 19 this year, Sergey Kravchenko, president of Boeing in Russia and the CIS, claimed that the problem had been fixed, and the 737 MAX was now certified in almost all countries.

The plane is still not certified in Russia, however. In March this year, the head of Rosaviatsia, Alexander Neradko, revealed that the approval of the aircraft would be decided after the normalization of travel in the world, after disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions to prevent its spread around the world.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!