Hundreds of passengers planning to leave South Florida on Wednesday night were forced to change their travel plans after President Trump ordered the FAA to ground all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 jets, a safety precaution following a deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash overseas on Sunday.
At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Southwest Airlines passengers were expected to take the greatest hit, but an airport spokesman said that hit would be minimal.
Southwest had three MAX 8 planes flying in and out of the airport Wednesday, a small fraction of its regular flight schedule.
Exact figures on how many flights could be canceled were not immediately available.
“It’s a relatively small impact, but the ripple effect is not known,” said airport spokesman Greg Meyer.
Nationally, the MAX 8 accounts for 5 percent of the airline’s fleet of Boeing 737s.
United Airlines, Norwegian Air, and WestJet also use the affected aircraft, but the effect at Fort Lauderdale was still being assessed, Meyer said.
WestJet canceled one flight from FLL to Toronto — a decision that was made before the FAA grounded the planes. WestJet is a Canadian airline, and Canada grounded the aircraft before the U.S. did.
At Miami International Airport, American Airlines was forced to cancel 19 flights Wednesday, said airport spokesman Jack Varela. As of late Wednesday afternoon, three planes were grounded and 10 incoming flights were expected by day’s end.
The move to ground the aircraft follows bans in more than 40 countries including Canada and the entire European Union in the days since an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed after taking off for Nairobi and killed all 157 people aboard.
Until Trump’s announcement, the Federal Aviation Administration had said that it didn’t have any data to show the jets are unsafe.
Trump cited “new information” that had come to light in the ongoing investigation into incident. He did not elaborate.
“All of those planes are grounded, effective immediately,” Trump said during a scheduled briefing on border security.
In a statement, Boeing said it “continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX.”
The company added that it had decided “out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety — to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.”
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company was “supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Information from The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.
rolmeda@SunSentinel.com, 954-356-4457, Twitter @SSCourts and @rolmeda