Brian Barsky on the 737 MAX in Salon: "Stop this madness"
Brian A. Barsky is a professor at the University of California-Berkley, and he teaches the course "Boeing 737 MAX: Money, Machines, and Morals in Conflict."
Excerpts:
"Boeing should return to its former proud engineering tradition and cease prioritizing profits over the safety of the flying public. The FAA needs to regain its role as the global gold standard of civil aviation oversight. And Congress should not cater to the whims of the airline manufacturer in its lawmaking and must strengthen the Freedom of Information Act to ensure transparency in matters of health and safety."
"Boeing has been prioritizing profits over safety, in both design and fabrication. Moreover, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been derelict in its duty as aviation safety watchdog, both before and after its initial certification of the 737 MAX in March 2017."
"Nineteen months later, on November 18, 2020, the FAA ungrounded the 737 MAX, amid continuing concerns over its safety. This decision was based on secret data and testing. The nonprofit airline consumer organization Flyers Rights filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request for flight test protocols and results pertaining to the ungrounding decision. However, what they received was close to 10,000 pages with almost every page completely blacked out."
"Boeing was subsequently charged with criminal wrongdoing related to its efforts to defraud the FAA about MCAS.
In the waning days of the Trump administration, the Department of Justice (DOJ) secretly negotiated a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with Boeing pertaining to the criminal charges. The DPA enables Boeing to request that the pending criminal charges against it be dropped if it does not commit any crimes over the term of the agreement.
I noticed startling timing: The agreement was signed on the infamous date of Jan. 6, 2021. The Alaska 1282 door plug blowout occurred the Jan. 5, 2024, which is just a hair before the expiration of the three-year term of the DPA."
