Xi Jinping said he was “shocked”. It is rare for Chinese president to express a warm feeling as he did on Monday, March 21, on television, after the Crash of a Boeing 737-800 ng of the company China Eastern which resulted in the death of the 132 people on board. For the American aircraft manufacturer, it is a new blow after the two accidents of his other model, the 737 max, in 2018 and 2019 (346 victims in total), who had nailed to the ground his plane between one and two years after Countries and cost $ 20 billion (€ 18.2 billion).
This time, these are the 737-800 ng, commissioned from the 1990s, who will stay on the tarmac, while nearly nine hundred of these devices are exploited by Chinese companies, and thousands. United States. Three-quarters of the 11,800 flights planned in China Tuesday were canceled, the crash amplifying the effect of COVID-19.
Need fresh money
The Boeing action lost 3.6% in Wall Street, Monday, because of the accident and a risk of delay in the redecolving of the max – authorized only in December by Chinese civil aviation, without that the flights have resumed. What will become Chinese orders, which account for a quarter of the world’s latest sales of the 737, estimated at five hundred devices this year? The Chicago giant needs fresh money and receives it only on delivery.
And what will it be in the conduct of the accident investigation, the Chinese authorities being always reluctant to recognize a responsibility that can certainly come from the design or manufacture of the plane, but also from its maintenance or behavior of drivers?
The group will face two difficulties: the political and commercial tensions between Beijing and Washington, revived by the Chinese refusal to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, who can thwart the serenity of the investigators’ work; and a new degradation of its image, three years after the accidents of lion air and Ethiopian Airlines.
DownFall: The Boeing case, Netflix’s documentary released in February, confirms – after the US Congress investigation – that the aircraft manufacturer had sacrificed safety on the altar of profit. American industry icon for decades, Boeing has not finished with trials of all kinds.