india

Updated: Mar 13, 2019 00:02 IST

India late on Tuesday night grounded Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft in light of Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people on board on Sunday, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said.

A DGCA official had earlier said that a ban was likely on the use of Boeing 737 Max 8 by Indian airlines and a final decision would be taken by Wednesday.

“DGCA has taken the decision to ground the Boeing 737-MAX planes immediately. These planes will be grounded till appropriate modifications and safety measures are undertaken to ensure their safe operations,” the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a tweet.

Earlier on Monday, India’s aviation regulator said it had imposed additional “interim” safety requirements for ground engineers and crew for the aircraft but stopped short of ordering their grounding.

SpiceJet and Jet Airways are the only two domestic airlines which operate Boeing 737 Max 8 planes. SpiceJet has around 12 ‘737 Max 8’ planes in its fleet, while Jet Airways has five.

SpiceJet said it has put in place all the additional precautionary measures issued by the aviation regulator following the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight.

Also read: More Boeings grounded amid global probe into Ethiopia crash

SpiceJet had said it is “actively engaged” with the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) and the aircraft manufacturer on the issue.

Jet, which recently grounded many aircraft due to its financial woes, said earlier that none of its five B-737 MAX aircraft was in operation.

Many countries including Britain, Germany, Poland, Belgium and Norway on Tuesday joined a rapidly growing number of countries grounding or closing airspace to a new Boeing plane involved in the Ethiopian Airlines disaster as a global team of investigators began looking for parallels with a similar crash just five months ago.

Australia, Brazil and Singapore on Tuesday joined China and Indonesia to ground Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft .