{"id":36723,"date":"2019-03-22T06:23:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T06:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36723"},"modified":"2019-03-22T06:23:07","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T06:23:07","slug":"indonesias-garuda-cancels-49-jet-boeing-737-deal-after-crashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=36723","title":{"rendered":"Indonesia’s Garuda cancels 49-jet Boeing 737 deal after crashes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Indonesia’s national carrier Garuda has told Boeing it will cancel a multibillion-dollar order for 49 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets after two fatal crashes involving the plane, in what is believed to be the first formal cancellation of the troubled model.<\/p>\n

“We have sent a letter to Boeing requesting that the order be cancelled,” Garuda spokesman Ikhsan Rosan said.<\/p>\n

“The reason is that Garuda passengers in Indonesia have lost trust and no longer have the confidence” in the plane, he said, adding the airline was awaiting a response from Boeing.<\/p>\n

Boeing officials will visit Indonesia<\/a> next week to discuss Garuda’s plans to call off the order.<\/p>\n

Garuda already received one of the planes, Rosan\u00a0<\/span>said, part of a 50-aircraft order worth $4.9bn at list prices when it was announced in 2014.<\/p>\n

The airline is also talking to Boeing about whether to return the plane it has received, the spokesman said.<\/p>\n

The carrier has so far paid Boeing about $26m, while the company’s head told Indonesian media outlet Detik it would consider switching to a new version of the single-aisle jet.<\/p>\n

“In principle, it’s not that we want to replace Boeing, but maybe we will replace [these planes] with another model,” Garuda Indonesia director I Gusti Ngurah Askhara Danadiputra told Detik.<\/p>\n

‘Probably not the last’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Shukor Yusof, head of Malaysia-based aviation<\/a> consultancy Endau Analytics, said Garuda’s announcement appeared to mark the first formal plans by a carrier to cancel an order for the 737 MAX 8.<\/p>\n

“[It] will probably not be the last. There is a risk that Garuda’s rival Lion Air, which also has many 737 MAX 8 orders, might make the same decision,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That is a risk. This has been made public by the Lion Air CEO. He stated publicly that he is considering” a cancellation.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0<\/span>added it was difficult to predict whether more major carriers would follow suit.<\/p>\n

“There are many unanswered questions and each airline has specific needs,” Yusof said. “Each airline needs to deliberate how they want to strategise their fleet management.”<\/p>\n

This month, Lion Air said it was postponing delivery of four of the jets after an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 went down<\/a> minutes into a flight to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.<\/p>\n

Budget carrier Lion – Southeast Asia’s biggest airline by fleet size and a major Boeing customer – said the planes had been on order for delivery this year, but the company was re-evaluating the situation.<\/p>\n

Lion Air operates 10 Max 8 jets, part of a then-record $22bn order from Boeing made in 2011.<\/p>\n

The airlines are the only two that use the Max 8 in Indonesia.<\/p>\n

Erratic descents<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Ethiopian tragedy came after a Lion Air jet of the same model crashed in Indonesia in October, killing all 189 people on board.<\/p>\n

Both planes reportedly experienced erratic steep climbs and descents as well as fluctuating airspeeds before crashing shortly after take-off.<\/p>\n

Investigators have honed in on an automated anti-stalling system introduced on the plane, which is designed to point the nose of the plane downward if it is in danger of stalling.<\/p>\n

The development comes as the American manufacturer struggles to cope with the fallout from the two crashes, which have cast a spotlight on the safety certification process and shaken confidence in a plane that is crucial to its future plans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indonesia’s national carrier Garuda has told Boeing it will cancel a multibillion-dollar order for 49 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets after two fatal crashes involving the plane, in what is believed to be the first formal cancellation of the troubled model. “We have sent a letter to Boeing requesting that the order be cancelled,” Garuda…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}