Air France Black-Box Hunter in Third Push to Solve Freak Crash

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markers in Africa) – French President Emmanuel Macron has meanwhile held discussions with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed about a new contract for Toulouse-based Airbus SE as part of a renewal of the Ethiopian Airlines fleet, a French official said Thursday.

Though the African carrier already operates the European planemaker’s A350 wide-body, all of its other jets are Boeings, including 787 Dreamliners for which it was one of the first global customers, and a variety of 737s.

Macron will also discuss a major Airbus order during his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping’s state visit to France later this month, the official said. China has 20 percent of all delivered Max jets and was the first major authority to ground the model after Sunday’s tragedy.

The Asian nation will itself be looking to benefit from the 737’s travails by attracting more sales for the Comac C919, which the company says has more than 800 orders worldwide.

Boeing’s $600 billion-plus backlog for the 737 Max is also looking shaky after several big customers reconsider their purchases, among them VietJet Aviation JSC, which doubled its order to about $25 billion last month, and Lion Air, operator of the plane in the Indonesia crash, which plans to drop a $22 billion deal, according to a person with knowledge of the plan.

Indonesia will send two officials to Addis Ababa as an observers of the investigation into the crash, and will share data and insights from its own probe into the loss of Lion Air flight 610 in October, according to Soerjanto Tjahjono, chairman of the country’s National Transportation Safety Committee.

The Lion Air Max experienced more than two dozen sharp dips shortly after takeoff, with a preliminary report suggesting the jet was automatically commanded to dive because software thought it was in danger of losing lift following a sensor malfunction.

A rift opened between Lion Air and Boeing when the U.S. company said the disaster could have been avoided if pilots had followed procedure, though it has since cooperated positively with Indonesia on the JT610 probe, according to Tjahjono, who said the NTSC hasn’t received any reports of further malfunctions concerning the Max.

The U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which has sent three experts to the Ethiopia crash, as British citizens were among those killed, said that whichever body processes the boxes, the airline and other relevant parties would attend as observers to ensure that proper protocols are followed.

Source: Bloomberg Business News