Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mbuyiseni Ndlozi has lived with HIV for 22 years
Air travel between European countries and the Middle East will be suspended for three months until the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has resolved questions about an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.
The flight was operated by Ethiopian Airlines from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on Sunday.
European foreign ministers on Wednesday said that all travel had been suspended until the safety agency made a decision.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has said that the aircraft is safe and that there are no outstanding concerns.
Clive Opperman, assistant director general, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), said that the new Boeing 737 Max Max 8 should be withdrawn from all transport if it does not have another code (COGIV) and for three months if it does.
After investigations of the aircraft, the EASA and ICAO both said there was “no more cause for concern about COVID-19.”
However, a United Kingdom aviation official told the BBC that British authorities had remained on alert to the possibility of a “serious malfunction” in the Lion Air 9M-MRO, which crashed a day after the crash in Indonesia.
The UK government did not want to endanger national interests by an abrupt or premature change of the Lion Air aircraft.
However, the official said that this safety announcement on the COSVID-19 aircraft did not pertain to the flights of Ethiopian Airlines.
Image copyright National Institutes of Health Image caption The Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed five minutes after it took off
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry told the BBC on Wednesday that investigators are analysing airline data to get more clues about why the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed near the city of Jakarta on 29 October.
Accident investigators have been working with Boeing engineers in the US since the accident, which killed 189 people on board.
The crash marked the first death of a passenger or crew member on the new model of Boeing jet, which has been flying for only five months.
In a statement, EASA said: “There has been an insufficient technical understanding of COVID-19 to change the fleet status.”
EASA’s director general, Jean-Paul Troadec, said: “At EASA, we are committed to safety. This means implementing a safety improvement plan, adopting certain corrective measures and imposing the necessary measures within the system if necessary.”
He said that more measures would be taken once they received all details from the Lion Air accident investigation.
As a result of the new measures, the agency said that operators will have to remove the airline code that appears on aircraft after certification.
The airline code is usually changed during the certification process to allow airlines to apply for licensing agreements for flying in the EU.
If an airline has not satisfied these requirements, it will be denied registration for operation in the EU.
The airline code that appears on an aircraft before certification does not affect its full certification status and is not included in the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s standard operating procedures.
However, in many countries, the airline code is used separately when transporting aircraft.
This means that operators may be able to carry out landing or takeoff activities using the incorrect type of aircraft.
The new measures will need to be implemented after the Boeing 737 Max 8 fleet is cleared by EASA’s Directorate General for Civil Aviation.
The 737 Max 8 has developed mixed reviews since it came into service in October, with a spate of events of concern.
On Monday, the FAA said it would investigate a video that appears to show a malfunction with the airliner’s automatic pilot system, called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).
Experts believe MCAS may have been partly to blame for the Lion Air crash.