For the second time in five months, a virtually(实际上) new Boeing 737 MAX airliner has crashed within minutes of taking off, killing all 149 passengers and eight crew aboard（船上的八名成员）. On March 10th Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 departed from Addis Ababa, the carrier’s（运输公司) home airport, for what should have been a routine two-hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. It fell out of the sky just six minutes later. The reaction to this second crash has turned this from a local tragedy into something with much wider ramifications.(对第二次事故的反应已经将这种情况从当地的悲剧转变为具有更广泛影响的事物) China’s aviation regulator（航空监管局） has told domestic airlines to ground(停飞） all their 737 MAX airliners, prompting a sell-off（引发了股份抛售） that wiped 9% off the value of shares in Boeing, an American aircraft manufacturer（美国飞机制造商） that makes the jets. Other countries such as Ethiopia and Indonesia have also grounded their fleets（车队，飞机队）. And several sources suggest that the 737 MAX now faces the very real risk of a worldwide grounding.
Speculating（推测） about the cause of the crash is futile（无用的） at this early stage.（在早期阶段，对飞机坠落的原因猜测是徒劳的。） But the similarities to the loss of Lion Air Flight 610 in the Java（爪哇） Sea last October are alarming. Both incidents involved brand-new（全新的） 737 MAX 8 jets delivered（交付） straight from Boeing less than four months previously（提前）. Both occurred in generally clear weather conditions. And both were so catastrophic（灾难性的） as to bring down the jets within minutes of takeoff, not giving their pilots time to return to their departure airports (as both requested). Such cataclysmic events often arouse fears of terrorism. But there is no evidence of an explosion on either jet.
