Washington: President Donald Trump lamented the complexity of modern airplanes on Tuesday in the wake of two deadly crashes in the past five months, appearing to speculate on the cause of the disasters before aviation experts from the United States and elsewhere complete their investigations. The president commented as several countries announced that they were grounding their fleets of the Boeing 737 Max 8 model involved in both crashes, or closing their airspace to the planes.

Trump tweeted that "airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly." He did not specifically mention the crashes, but his comments come just two days after an Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people aboard and as a cascade of countries worldwide began suspending use of the plane. "Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger," Trump tweeted.