MUSCAT: As a result of the Public Authority for Civil Aviation directives on suspending operations of Boeing 737 Max, Oman Air has cancelled 10 flights flying from Muscat to local, regional and international destinations.

Flights to Salalah, Hyderabad, Bahrain will remain cancelled as per the schedule update on Oman Air website.

The note on the website adds that “we have cancelled the following flights in the period between 15th to 19th March 2019. We are rebooking guests on the next available flights to their destinations. We advise all our guests who are due to travel during the same period to check the flight status or contact our call center +96824531111.”

Since March 15th, Oman Air has cancelled a few number due to the Boeing 737 Max 8 issue.

After a second air disaster involving the 737 MAX 8, which claimed 157 lives, aviation giant Boeing swung into crisis mode, losing $25 billion of market capitalization and suffering a severe hit to its reputation.

The tragedy of the Ethiopian Airlines flight on Sunday, in which all 157 people on board perished, renewed fears about the safety of the plane, and led to it being grounded worldwide — although the US decision was not made for three days.

This was the second tragic accident in less than five months involving this model, which has been in service since May 2017, after the crash of a Lion Air flight in October which killed 189 people.

A malfunction of the new MCAS stall prevention system on the MAX was implicated in the Lion Air accident in Indonesia.

And the Federal Aviation Administration said evidence at the crash site in Ethiopia and new satellite data showed similarities and warranted “further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents.”

And despite the growing use of the MAX worldwide, in China and Europe in particular, Boeing only issued brief statements, and meanwhile appeared to be attempting to prevent the US authorities from grounding the plane.

Two days after the accident, the company’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg spoke on the phone with President Donald Trump, who had complained on Twitter that modern airplanes were becoming too complex for pilots to handle.

And it didn’t help that the FAA announced it had ordered Boeing to make a software fix to the MCAS flaw, which some American pilots also encountered, raising questions about whether the manufacturer was diligent about getting the word out.

 Two industry sources told AFP on Friday that the company will be rolling out a software upgrade for the MCAS in the next 10 days, which helped boost its share price, but the lag since the October crash in Indonesia is troubling.