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editorial

Within 24 hours of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 on Sunday, March 10, China and Indonesia had grounded the Boeing 737 Max, the type of passenger jet involved in the tragedy. By Tuesday, the United Kingdom, the European Union and many other nations had followed suit.

It meant that most airlines around the world were hangaring their 737 Max planes while they awaited word on the cause of the accident, which killed 157 people, and which appears worryingly similar to a fatal crash in Indonesia in October of last year involving the same aircraft.

By Tuesday evening, there were only four major countries that had not grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8 and its slightly bigger cousin, the Max 9: the United States, Canada, Russia and Japan.

In fact, on Monday, while China was closing its airspace to the 737 Max series, Transport Minister Marc Garneau was telling reporters he would fly in one “without hesitation.”

He declined to follow the lead of other countries and ground the planes, saying there was no evidence they were unsafe. Between Air Canada, which owns 40 of the Max 8s, and Westjet, with 12, tens of thousands of passengers took off and landed in 737 Max 8s in Canada over the next 48 hours. All arrived safely.

And then, on Wednesday, based on satellite evidence that Mr. Garneau said did indeed suggest a similarity in the fatal flight paths of the planes in the Ethiopian and Indonesian crashes, and hence a possible common cause, he reversed himself and grounded the 737 Max 8 and 9. The United States quickly followed suit.

The question for Canadians is, did the Minister move quickly enough?

Mr. Garneau’s department received the telltale satellite tracking data on Tuesday night, and he announced his decision on Wednesday.

But the United States had the same satellite data as of Monday. And there was evidence from as early as Sunday, provided by flight-tracking websites, suggesting the Ethiopian Airlines pilots lost control of their plane in a way that was eerily similar to what happened with the Indonesian crash last October that killed 189 people.

That accident, involving Lion Air, resulted in a lot of media coverage of the relatively new Boeing 737 Max series.

In an effort to produce a more fuel-efficient version of the venerable 737, Boeing had developed a new model with larger engines. The size and placement of those engines tended to push the nose of the plane upward in some situations, risking a stall. Boeing added software to the flight-control system that, connected to sensors outside the plane, would force its nose back down if necessary.

Boeing also managed to convince the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration that the 737 and the 737 Max were similar enough that pilots didn’t need costly retraining. The upshot is that many pilots were not aware that the plane’s autopilot would correct too steep a climb, and didn’t know how to override it if did so in error.

The satellite tracking data that convinced Mr. Garneau to ground all 737 Max planes showed that the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight suddenly lost altitude during takeoff, and that the pilots seemed to be having difficulty controlling the plane. The Lion Air flight had followed a similar trajectory before crashing into the Java Sea.

Since the tragedy on Sunday, there have been new reports of other 737 Max flights in which pilots said the nose of their planes suddenly dipped earthward. In those cases, they were able to take back control of their aircraft.

But given what was already known about the issues with the 737 Max, and the early evidence suggesting similarities with another crash, it is fair to say that there were two options available to Mr. Garneau.

He could have done what other countries did and, based on conjecture combined with an abundance of caution, grounded all flights. Or he could do what he ended up doing, which was to allow dozens more flights to take off and land until he saw evidence confirming that conjecture.

The fact that he ultimately grounded the planes casts doubt about his choice. Commercial air travel may be the safest form of transportation in the world, statistically speaking, but its overseers must still be willing to move proactively when a serious issue presents itself. Evidence suggests Mr. Garneau should not have waited as long as he did to act.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly said there were just two countries that had not grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8 and the Max 9 by Tuesday evening. Japan and Russia had not either.

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