False claims Boeing made to the Federal Aviation Administration about a critical system on its 737 MAX airplane may have led to a fatally flawed product being sold to airlines around the globe. In the legal world, however, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the people killed in two subsequent air crashes are victims, according to a legal filing by Kenneth Polite, US Assistant Attorney General Criminal Division in a Texas courtroom on Tuesday. The law surely allows lawyers like Mr. Polite and his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, to argue over semantics but when it comes to who is impacted on the most fundamental level… Read More…

Trust a crisis manager to be attuned to how to get it right when an airline is returning to service a plane as notorious as the 737 MAX. Ethiopian Airlines, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have even heard the music let alone thought about the right chord. On Wednesday, executives from the airline and Boeing joined journalists, government officials, and yes, even customers for cake and bonhomie for a demonstration flight to mark the return of the MAX to service. This is not the way to respect or acknowledge the MAX backstory. On a day in March nearly 3 years ago, 157 people… Read More…

  To much fanfare and a curiously ironic twist, United Airlines became the latest American carrier to open its own pilot training program. On January 27th it officially welcomed the 30 cadets who arrived ready to learn to fly at Arizona’s Goodyear Airport two months ago. The fanfare is justified. United now occupies and runs Aviate Academy, formerly the flight school of Lufthansa, and it is proud that 80 percent of its first students will provide a demographic diversity previously not seen in airline cockpits that remain overwhelmingly white and male in the United States. What’s ironic is the timing. United is several years behind… Read More…

On Data Privacy Day, yep, you read that right, Google it, I’m here to share the story of 17-year-old Daisy Fichthorn of Darien, Conn. May it be a warning that despite the fact that 51 countries note the importance of privacy and data protection, in the airline world this means less to some companies than others. Anyway back to Daisy. The Connecticut teen downloaded the coronavirus vaccination verification app, VeriFLY to her phone earlier this month because she hoped it would make it easier to navigate through the gauntlet of Covid-related travel restrictions before her flight to Zaragosa, Spain. In emails, American Airlines was pretty… Read More…

Relatives of 737 MAX victims seeking to undo a plea deal Boeing made with the Department of Justice, will make their case to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland next week. Lawyers are calling the meeting with the nation’s top law enforcement officer ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unprecedented’.  But in filing court documents claiming the Justice Department violated their rights when it signed a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing, they are following the playbook of victims of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In 2008, Federal law enforcement made an arrangement with Epstein that is similar in opacity to the deal prosecutors made with Boeing. Epstein was allowed to avoid a… Read More…

In the world of air accident investigations, finding out what led to a crash is followed by finding out why. Why is critical. That’s one reason I often write about the fallacy of attributing an accident to “pilot error”. Pilots (mechanics, designers, schedulers, dispatchers, flight attendants, etc.) will make mistakes, that is inevitable. Tracking those errors upstream to see what in the system led to those mistakes is how aviation gets safer. Or, as Key Dismukes, one of my favorite human factors scientists once told me, “The airplane, the designer, and the pilot are part of a complex system. Under certain circumstances, things happen that… Read More…

Among the events scheduled to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, is a gathering this weekend at the Connecticut Air & Space Center. A World War 2-era warbird, a recently renovated Chance Vought Corsair, dominates the main room, on the property of the historic 1929 hangar of Curtis Wright Flying Services. The Corsair was a carrier-based fighter plane, the fastest Navy plane at the time with a range of 11-hundred miles. FG-1D with the number 92460, is an artifact and a symbol of the museum’s particular focus; Connecticut’s contribution to aviation history. Over the past century, the… Read More…

If safety professionals are underappreciated by the beneficiaries of their labor it could be because their work is hard to assess. Or, as retired air accident investigator Ron Schleede explains, “You can’t count the accident you prevented. You can’t calculate the lives you save.” And while that’s often true, Harry Robertson, who died on October 9th, did interrupt death. He did this by separating air accidents from the single largest consequential hazard, a post-crash fire. And he accomplished that by eliminating ruptured fuel tanks and spilled fuel the largest factors in post-crash fires. “Most severe army helicopter crashes resulted in fires, accounting for over 40… Read More…

Authorities in New Mexico investigating the unintentional shooting of two filmmakers last week by actor Alec Baldwin told reporters today that the actor was given a gun and told it was unloaded even though a live round was in the chamber. When Baldwin, on the set of the western film, Rust, fired the gun while rehearsing a scene, a bullet went through cinemaphotographer Helyne Hutchins and then struck Souza. “It fired from the weapon and it caused the death of Hutchins and injured Souza,” said Sante Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza. Three weapons were being used for the film, Mendoza said but only the .45… Read More…

In a quiet but urgent tone, the attorney representing Mark Forkner, Boeing’s former chief technical pilot for the design of the 737 MAX, urged insiders to come forward with information that might help his client, now facing fraud charges related to two deadly crashes. Speaking outside the Federal Courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas to “all of you who know the truth” Houston lawyer David Gerger, urged insiders to get in touch. Forkner, 47, left Boeing in July 2018 to fly for Southwest, one of the larger 737 MAX customers. Three months later, the first of two MAX aircraft designed with new flight control software, crashed… Read More…