If there is any truth to the adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, then there are some very crazy folks in the United States Department of Justice. How else to explain the willingness of the government to consider once again, allowing Boeing to avoid a criminal trial for behavior that led to the deaths of 346 people in the crashes of two 737 Max aircraft?  We will know later this week what kind of a juicy deal Boeing gets in its latest scandal; the 5-year saga of the lethal Boeing 737 Max…. Read More…

Many years ago while covering the trial of Claus von Bulow for the attempted murder of his heiress wife, I read a description of his lawyer that I have never forgotten. In an article for New York Magazine, Herald Price Fahringer was described as “silver-haired with a tongue to match”. Kudos to the talented writer, Lally Weymouth for that turn of phrase. Fahringer was equally clever. He told the judge at the 1982 trial in Newport, Rhode Island the only thing he would waive during the trial would be his hands. Fahringer died in 2015 after a 50-year career practicing law. I thought of him… Read More…

A Boeing whistleblower who was found dead in his truck in Charleston, South Carolina two and a half months ago, died by suicide, the city coroner announced today. Sixty-two-year-old John Barnett was found in his pickup truck with a gunshot wound to the head and a gun in his hand.  Additionally, the coroner explained that security camera footage of Barnett’s truck showed no one entering or exiting it from the time Barnett was seen backing it into a space at the Holiday Inn the night of March 8, until hotel personnel discovered his body the following morning. And while the coroner’s statement brings to an… Read More…

An interesting difference of opinion has emerged among U.S. Federal District Court Judges over whether government agencies have the last word on how they enforce their regulations. A Texas Federal Judge ruled on April 7th, that U.S. Food and Drug Administration improperly certified the abortion pill, Mifepristone and failed to heed the concerns of physicians and associations opposed to it. This post is not about abortion. It points out the curious relationship of that decision with a contrary one by Kansas Federal Judge Monti Belot in a Boeing manufacturing case. In 2014, Belot ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration was the final authority when it… Read More…

October 24, 2022 – This post has been updated to include statements from Delta A Federal Judge in Texas stated the obvious late Friday when he ruled that the families of people killed on Boeing 737 Max aircraft were victims of crimes Boeing has acknowledged committing during the design of the airplane. In 2018 and 2019, 346 people died in two separate crashes; one in Indonesia and the other in Ethiopia which largely were the result of Boeing’s intentional actions. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, however, has taken the position that the government, not the families of the dead, was Boeing’s victim. This is more… Read More…

One has to wonder just how much longer Delta Air Lines wants to screw around with Karlene Petitt. Last winter, after five years of testimony and legal arguments, Administrative Law Judge Scott Morris found the airline had mistreated the veteran pilot by retaliating against her when she reported safety violations. In the judge’s word, the airline “weaponized” its right to order pilots to undergo psychiatric examination by sending Petitt to a company-selected psychiatrist who gave her a career-ending diagnosis that was not accurate. There’s a lot to unpack in the case, but for purposes of Delta’s latest shenanigan, let’s just say that when Judge Morris… Read More…

Delta Air Lines and its top executives, including the present FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, retaliated against a pilot when it sent her for psychiatric evaluation after she complained of safety issues at the airline, a judge has ruled. Judge Scott Morris ruled that Delta “engaged in an adverse employment action with discriminatory intent,” when it sent Karlene Petitt to Dr. David Altman, a company-appointed doctor who determined she was bipolar. Had that been true, it would have been a career-ending diagnosis.  But Petitt, 58, was not bipolar, as two other doctors later determined. Nevertheless, the ordeal kept her out of the cockpit for nearly two… Read More…

  The pilots of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 encountered troubles with their brand new Boeing 737 Max shortly after the jet’s wheels left the pavement in Addis Ababa, early in the morning of March 10th. The sensor registering the angle at which the airplane sliced through the sky sent erroneous information into the plane’s system and the stick shaker in front of captain Yared Getachew (seen left in photo above) “activated and remained active until near the end of the flight,” the Ethiopian investigators have determined. Reading through the 25-page preliminary report the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) of Ethiopia released today, a cascade of… Read More…

The first civil lawsuit on behalf of an American victim of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 will be filed on Thursday in Federal Court in Chicago on behalf of a 24-year old health care worker and the niece of consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Samya Stumo, originally from Sheffield, Massachusetts, was on her way to Nairobi for work with ThinkWell Global when the Boeing 737 Max plunged into a field six minutes after takeoff. The accident, the second crash of Boeing’s newest jetliner forced the grounding of the entire fleet and tough scrutiny of the design and certification of the airplane. Robert Clifford, a… Read More…

America’s top transportation safety official, and a former 737 captain told U.S. senators on Wednesday what he might have done if he was in the cockpit of one of the Boeing 737 Maxs that inexplicably and repeatedly went nose down before crashing in Indonesia and Ethiopia. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman, Robert Sumwalt replied to that hypothetical question saying, “Well, I flew the 737 for 10 years, and I do believe there is a procedure on the Flintstone version of the 737 I flew, a very old 737, but I do believe the first thing I would do is oppose that motion by pulling the… Read More…