Aviation authorities are best placed to decide whether or not to ground jets

FOLLOWING the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines commercial jet soon after take-off on Sunday, the airline grounded its entire fleet of Boeing 737 Max 8.

The next day, China and Indonesia ordered their airlines to do the same. Without the mandate of a regulatory directive, very few airlines that operate this latest iteration of the 737s have done so of their own volition.

Singapore Airlines' subsidiary SilkAir, which has six of these aircraft, said on Monday that its planes were ope…