Up to 384 Dublin-bound passengers left stranded in US

Up to 384 travellers were unable to fly to Dublin airport from the US on Tuesday night after their flights were cancelled amid global concerns surrounding the safety of the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.

Following the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 in which 157 passengers were killed, questions were raised about the safety of Boeing's Max family of aircraft.

The questions led to a plethora of aviation authorities and airlines around the world grounding the Max 8 and Max 9, including the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) and Norwegian Air.

The move by Norwegian, which uses the Max 8 on its transatlantic routes from Dublin and Shannon airports, meant its flights out of Dublin to Providence, Rhode Island, and Newburgh, New York, were cancelled, discommoding as many as 384 passengers.

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Additionally, up to a further 384 were prevented from flying to the Republic on Tuesday night as the return legs of those flights would have been unable to land at Dublin airport.

Although Boeing said it had "full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max", the European Union Aviation Safety Agency issued an emergency airworthiness directive, saying that further actions may be necessary to ensure the Max 8 and Max 9 can continue to fly. In the absence of that information it suspended all flight operations of those two models.

Critically, however, neither the US or Canada suspended operations of the aircraft, with Canadian authorities noting they were ready to "act immediately" to suspend flights if new information emerged.