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Malaysia suggests it could cancel Boeing 737 Max 8 orders

More than 130 planes have been grounded worldwide in recent days, but there are hundreds more that have been ordered from Boeing, whose fates are now less certain.

Malaysia’s economic affairs minister said on Monday that Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund should review an earlier purchase agreement for 25 of Boeing’s 737 Max 8 planes, putting those orders injeopardy.

Boeing’s 2016 agreement with Malaysia Airlines — an embattled, state-owned carrier — was valued at $2.75 billion at list prices and included purchase rights for additional 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9 aircraft.

“They have to revisit whatever agreements that they had in the past,” the minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Aliwas told reporters.

No other airlines have publicly questioned their orders of Boeing Max aircraft in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines crash, said Shukor Yusof, the founder of Endau Analytics, an aviation consultancy based in Malaysia and Singapore.

Kazanah’s backtrack on the orders may have less to do with safety and more to do with money and politics, Mr. Yusof said, adding that the airline has been plagued by steep losses since 2014. Additionally, he said, the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, which came to power last year is aware that the citizens are currently skeptical of spending from government coffers.