Zimbabwe whose flag carrier is failing to service its routes on time leaving passengers stranded for hours has warned citizens in the Southern African nation from boarding American-built Boeing 737 Max8.
This follows the crashing of an Ethiopian Airline flight ET302 from the Ethiopian capital to Nairobi in Kenya killing all 149 passengers on board.
The plane was a Boeing 737 Max 8 and it becomes the second aircraft of the same model to crash in less than five months.
Five months ago a Lion Air Flight crashed into the sea near Indonesia with nearly 190 people on board.
China and Indonesia have ordered their airlines on Monday to ground all of these aircraft that they operate.
Zimbabwe has joined the ‘security alert’.
“While investigations around the plane crash involving Indonesian and Ethiopian planes are continuing, we would like to advise Zimbabwean citizens that we have classified the American-built Boeing 737-Max8 as an unsafe aircraft due to its malfunctioning auto-pilot software,” deputy minister of Information and Broadcasting services Energy Mutodi said on his Twitter account.
Interestingly, Mutodi’s announcement comes at a time where national airliner Air Zimbabwe is currently operating with one aircraft to service all its routes .
In a statement last week, Air Zim appealed for patience insisting that the “airline expects delivery of additional equipment soon to ease the current operational challenges.”
