Canada just grounded the 737 Max 8 aircraft: Why is the United States the primary holdout?

This morning Canada became the latest nation to temporarily ground all Boeing 737 Max 8 airliners after two deadly crashes in the last six months. Max 8 aircraft are not only banned from taking off in Canada, but banned from entering the country, as well. The plane has also been grounded in the European Union and elsewhere, leaving the United States as the primary holdout.

Dallas News found that Max 8 pilots had filed multiple federal complaints about the "safety mechanism cited in preliminary reports" of the October Max 8 crash in Indonesia, including one who called the flight manual "inadequate and almost criminally insufficient.” The problem, apparently within the autopilot systems, was reported to have caused sudden nosing-down of the plane during initial ascent.

A software fix for the problem was planned for last January, but the ongoing federal government shutdown delayed those updates, halting the work for five weeks.

It is unclear why United States authorities have not grounded the aircraft, as other nations have. Under Trump, the Department of Transportation has emphasized deregulation and a hands-off attitude toward industry. The Federal Aviation Administration's top post has even vacant for more than a year, and fines against major U.S. airlines have dropped nearly 90 percent.

But Boeing has long spent tremendous resources lobbying Washington, and the company has made notable efforts to court the Trump administration after a rocky start. Weeks after Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg visited Mar-a-Lago to convince Trump to pull back on his threat to cancel the construction of new presidential aircraft, the company donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee. That initial rift seems to have been well-healed, at this point. Critics complain about too-tight bonds between the company, the regulators charged with regulating them, and lawmakers themselves.

Two United States airlines, Southwest and American Airlines, are currently flying several dozen Max 8 planes, and have announced no voluntary groundings of their own. It remains unclear whether the FAA will revisit its decision now that even Canada has barred the model from its airspace; for now, the agency continues to stand by the aircraft's safety.