Romania's Blue Air to make final decision on its Boeing 737 MAX order only after crash investigation

Romania’s Blue Air to make final decision on its Boeing 737 MAX order only after crash investigation

Blue Air, the largest Romanian airline, will take a decision on its order for 12 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets only after an investigation into a fatal crash of one of the planes in Ethiopia, CEO Marius Puiu told Reuters.

Puiu said his company was “monitoring the situation very carefully.”

“We trust the world-wide precautionary suspension of flights, a decision that puts civil aviation transport safety first,” Puiu said.

The first 737 MAX 8 plane was planned to arrive in Romania this summer, according to the company.

“We are in permanent contact with the manufacturer, with EASA (EU’s aviation safety regulator) and the Romanian civil aeronautical authority,” he said.

Currently, Blue Air operates 25 Boeing 737 series aircraft – 737-300, 737-400, 737-500, 737-700 and 737-800, with capacities ranging from 120 to 189 seats.

After two fatal crashes in less than six months, Boeing announced on Wednesday that it was recommending the grounding of all Boeing 737 Max 8 planes worldwide “out of an abundance of caution”, after a total of 50 countries have grounded or banned the Max 8 models, including the US, which initially had been reluctant to do so.

Boeing’s 737 Max fleet includes the Max 7, 8, 9 and 10 models. By the end of January, the company had delivered 350 Max 8s out of 5,011 orders around the world. The Max 7 and 10 models have not yet been rolled out on the market.