Australian airline Qantas Airways has caved in to pressure on Friday to ground its Boeing 737 NG planes over cracking issues discovered on the wings of the planes.
The airline said it had reached the decision after carrying out inspections of its planes.
Qantas had been urged by the union that champions the interests of aircraft maintenance engineers in Australia to ground the planes until those structural problems are attended to.
"These aircraft should be kept safe on the ground until urgent inspections are completed and advice in relation to the ongoing nature of the wing cracks is confirmed by Boeing," Steve Purvinas, who is the US regulators union federal secretary had urged in a statement.
The Boeing 737 NG planes are not the same as the Boeing 737 Max jets that were grounded worldwide after the two crashes involving Indonesian and Ethiopian airplanes.
Qantas said that the cracks did not in any significant way compromise the security of the planes.
"Even when a crack is present, it does not immediately compromise the safety of the aircraft, " Qantas said in a statement.
"We would never operate an aircraft unless it was completely safe to do so, " it added.
The airline went on to add that none of the planes in its 737 NG fleet had been flown beyond 30,000 miles.