Boeing’s MAX entered service with American low-cost carrier Southwest in 2017.
It started out as a bestseller, becoming Boeing’s fastest selling aircraft. Within months of its launch, Boeing had 5,000 orders from more than 100 customers worldwide for the MAX.
However, 19 months after its launch, the plane ran into trouble when a Lion Air aircraft crashed, on October 29, 2018. At that time, Boeing indicated that the crash was due to pilot error.
A few months later, on March 10, 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines MAX crashed soon after take-off from the Addis Ababa airport.
Within hours of this crash, China grounded its MAX fleet. Soon, other countries followed. By March 13, less than 72 hours after the Ethiopian crash, almost the entire global MAX fleet had been grounded.
