Boeing shares rise after report that a bird strike may have caused 737 Max crash

Boeing shares rose Tuesday after a Wall Street Journal report said U.S. aviation officials believe a bird strike may have caused the crash of a 737 Max in Ethiopia in March.

The fast-selling Boeing 737 Max airplanes have been grounded since shortly after that accident, which came less than five months after a similar crash in Indonesia. Together, both crashes killed a combined 346 people.

Boeing shares were up 2.1% in premarket trading.

Crash investigators have indicated that bad sensor data triggered an anti-stall system aboard the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 that went down shortly after takeoff in March, a similar scenario to a crash of the same type of plane in Indonesia in October. The system automatically pushes the nose of the plane down if it perceives the aircraft is in a stall, the normal way to recover from such a position. That can be fatal if the plane is not in a stall, however.

U.S. aviation officials think a bird strike is the likely culprit in erroneous sensor data that fed the anti-stall system in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, according to the Wall Street Journal report, which cited sources familiar with the crash investigation.

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