A Latam Airlines Boeing 787 at Auckland Airport. Photo / Brett Phibbs
A Latam Airlines Boeing 787 at Auckland Airport. Photo / Brett Phibbs
The brother of a passenger who died in a fatal Boeing crash says there’s no excuse for the issues we’re still seeing with the aircraft manufacturer.
2024 has been a rough start for Boeing after a door plug blew off mid-flight on an Alaskan Airline Boeing aircraft, a LATAM Airlines Sydney to Auckland flight plunged mid-air injuring 50 passengers, a tire fell off after take off from a United Airlines service, and more potential safety issues with the engines of the 737 Max and 787 Dreamliner was announced.
All this, while March 10 marked five years since Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing 157 people on board.
It happened just months after Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia with 189 people on board. It was also a Boeing 737 MAX 8.
On board the fatal Ethiopian Airlines flight was Graziella de Luis y Ponce, a United Nations interpreter.
Her brother, Javier de Luis, is a lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
He was appointed to a US Federal Aviation Administration panel that reviewed Boeing’s safety practices last year.
He told The Front Page the FAA panel, required under a 2020 law passed by Congress, found a disconnect between what’s said by upper-level Boeing management and what’s being believed and perceived on the ground.
“They [Boeing] say they want to hear about problems. You won’t be punished. But, then [employees] say but my buddy brought up an issue and now he’s been let go. Those are the stories that we heard in talking to people,” he said.
“If the people that work for you don’t believe you, that’s a real fundamental problem. And that has to be addressed.”
Family members of those who died in the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes confront Boeing executives during a Senate hearing in October. Photo / Anna Moneymaker, The New York Times
Boeing’s been given nine months to make a move on the panel’s recommendations - just as subsequent FAA report finds multiple problems with Boeing’s production practices following a six-week audit.
In terms of the juxtaposition of the emotion of losing a loved one and being a leading expert in the aerospace field, de Luis says it’s been difficult.
“I often say that I’m sort of cursed with knowing a bit too much. I know how this stuff happened. I know how it should have happened. I can clearly see that there’s no excuse for the kind of stuff that we saw on the max.”
“There’s a saying that FAA regulations are written in blood. Someone died. Some other people figured out why they died. And then we wrote rules so that no one dies again. And to not comply with the rules and to keep asking for exemptions is an insult to the people who died.”
Listen to the full episode to learn more about Javier de Luis’ thoughts on Boeing and what it needs to do to reform.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
