One morning I woke up in Jakarta and saw my case on the front page of The New York Times next to an article about Bret Ellis, a fine writer and friend. This was both strange and satisfying.
I am honored to to be meeting, learning about, and representing many of the victim families from the crash of Lion Air JT 610. I have spent most of 2019 in Indonesia. The victim families deserve lawyers who care about them and will fight for them. They have that.
In May, I was in Chicago where we filed our lawsuit against Boeing in federal court.
As I told Yahoo Finance. “Liability will not truly be in dispute here. Boeing is at fault. Their equipment failed. Their planes crashed twice.”
I also did an interview with 60 Minutes Australia as part of an excellent feature about the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. The New York Times has run several solid stories about the aircraft, the crashes, and the surrounding circumstances.
Local papers generally don’t do true investigative reporting, but Dominic Gates of The Seattle Times has written several well-researched, fact-based articles.
The story of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 is a cautionary tale about putting profits before people.
On March 10, 2019, a second, nearly new, Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed. This time it was Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 302. The circumstances were eerily similar to the Lion Air crash. The same plane, the same defective equipment, the same fatal dive.
The 737 MAX 8 has a new computer system, the MCAS, that essentially takes control of the aircraft from the pilots. The MCAS forces the nose down if it senses the plane may stall. In both of these crashes, the MCAS apparently incorrectly sensed a stall and forced the nose down into a fatal dive.
Preliminary reports from both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crash indicate that the pilots fought with the MCAS. You can see it in the flight patterns. The computer forced the nose down, the pilots brought the nose up, the computer forced the nose back down, the pilots brought it back up…. This went on until the computer overpowered the pilots.
At an international press conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, I likened the MCAS to HAL, the villainous computer in the Stanley Kubrick movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I saw nodding heads. Fortunately there were movie aficionados in the audience.
So why was the MCAS installed?
Aeronautical engineers believe the 737, which had an excellent safety record prior to these two crashes, became an unstable plane when the engines were moved forward. The MCAS was designed to remedy this instability.
So why were the engines moved forward at the expense of the plane’s airworthiness?
Because the business minds of Boeing, according to Forbes and other sources, believed they needed a more fuel-efficient jet to compete with AirBus, a French aircraft manufacturer. The goal of a more fuel-efficient aircraft makes sense. The problem is the plane was rushed into service and carrying passengers before it was safe.
Boeing did not fully inform pilots, the airlines, or even the FAA of the potential dangers posed by the MCAS. The manufacture downplayed the dramatic changes to the 737 for fear the information would negatively impact sales.
In other words, it all comes down to profits.
For more information on the Boeing 737 MAX and our lawsuits, stay tuned to my professional Facebook page and personal Facebook page. I am also sharing stories here and on the blog of my author website.
I’m grateful for this fitting transition from local safety to global safety.