Turkey grounds Boeing 737 MAX planes after Ethiopian Airlines crash

ANKARA, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's Transport and Infrastructure Ministry on Tuesday announced that all scheduled flights of Boeing 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9 aircraft have been halted in the country, after the Ethiopian Airlines crash rises worldwide safety concerns.

"As a result of assessments, the flights of the Boeing 737 Max 8 and Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft have been halted until further decision in order to ensure flight safety," state-run Anadolu Agency cited the ministry as saying.

Turkey's flag carrier airline, Turkish Airlines (THY), has also announced to ground all 13 Boeing 737 Max aircraft in its fleet as of March 13, THY's CEO Bilal Eksi said on Twitter.

Eksi said the decision was taken after consultations with Turkey's General Directorate of Civil Aviation.

Dozens of countries on Tuesday joined a rapidly growing number of countries grounding or closing airspace to 737 Max airplanes as a global team of investigators began looking for parallels between the Ethiopian Airlines disaster with a similar crash just five months ago.