Grounding of Boeing 737 8 Max B38M

FlightAware General
1

I was interested in which 737 8 Max aircraft are still flying around the world.
I filtered for B38M, and it (3/12/19) looked as I expected, with noted flights concentrated in the US and China, and none over the countries that have grounded them.
Does grounding affect flights to and from the UK, even from areas where they are not grounded?

And, a real point of interest…
FlightRadar24 seems to only show B38M over the US, and two from Turkish Airlines.
If I look over China, FlightRadar24 shows none.
If I look at one of the flights in FlightAware, it shows an aircraft of B38M and the flight number. If I then look at that specific flight number in FlightRadar24, I get a different aircraft designation, like B78M instead of B38M, but if I filter for that, I don’t pick up the flight.

2

Yes…if the airspace has been closed to a particular aircraft, it cannot even fly through.

A number of flights had to be cancelled, or turned around if already in the air, when the UK closed its airspace to the 737 Max 8 yesterday.

3

As Canada just closed it’s airspace for the Max 8 & 9, I see AC758 is still in the US but due to land at YYZ at about 15:00. Will they turn it around or allow it to land?

4

Read somewhere that flights in the air are allowed to continue.
Ferry flights without passengers to maintenance base are also allowed.

(Edit: This is in reference to the Canadian NOTAM grounding 737 MAX, with other countries flights in the air were not as lucky)

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5

In this case, it’s coming home, so it’ll be allowed to land.

But there were cases yesterday where they turned around. This is critical if the plane is flying to a destination outside of its home country. No airline wants to have a plane stuck overseas, the costs can be very high.

2 Likes
6

Now that the US has grounded the B38M, I think some flight plans must not have been updated.
There are still 14 in the air over the US, according to FlightAware, only 9 according to FlightRadar24, some of them with departure times after I heard about the US grounding.

FlightAware shows one of these, IBK1763 Dublin-SWF, but FlightRadar24 says that it’s a 787.

7

Here are the last flights over Germany (southwest part) seen on 2019/03/12

B73M%20
B73M%201778×854 334 KB

… small extract from my SQL

8

On 3/14, AAL9673 shows up as one of several 737 Max 8 on FlightAware
FlightRadar24 also lists AA9673 as a 737 Max 8.

Maybe I don’t understand what “grounded” means, or airlines are haphazardly changing the flight plans to show the replacement aircraft.
Flightaware seems to be using older data than FR24 for some flights.

9

They are grounded for passenger carrying purposes.
They can be flown without passengers, as far as I am aware.
They need to be able to do maintenance, re-position aircraft and get them fixed (if this is required).

11

Boy i hope so, That Dublin flight goes right over me on landing and takeoff lol. I’ve always thought Flightaware was updated rather quickly, now i’m not so sure. But i’ll be keeping an eye on this flight either way, close to the car…keys in the ignition lol.

Edit: Norwegian Air says it’s a 787 Dreamliner. Whew…

1 Like
12

I also question the American Airlines flights, they were planned to gate and had luggage codes. I don’t think that would be the case for maintenance, not to mention i don’t think they were maintenance points for AA anyway. Must just be a case of not being updated, hopefully.

I don’t think we can see amount of passengers on active flights can we? I tried with American Airlines and it only gave flight and gate info.