Consumer champion targets Boeing over flawed Max 8 jets
The crisis over the safety of Boeing jets has put the planemaker in the sights of Ralph Nader, the veteran US activist, because a young relative died in the latest crash.
Nader, the scourge of American big business since the 1960s, has vowed to bring Boeing to civil and criminal justice over the allegedly flawed control system built into its latest 737 Max series.
Outrage has grown around the world since it became clear that Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed on March 10 near Addis Ababa, was apparently crippled by the same software malfunction that contributed to the disaster suffered by a Lion Air 737 in Indonesia in October.
Among the 157 killed in Ethiopia was Samya Stumo, a 24-year-old public health researcher from Massachusetts who was the daughter of Nader’s niece. At 85, Nader remains a fearsome figure after a consumer protection crusade that began in 1965 when he published Unsafe At Any Speed, a best-selling book that attacked the methods of General Motors and the other Detroit carmakers.
He ran several times for the presidency, most recently in 2000.
Echoing allegations that have come from experts, Nader says that Boeing appears guilty of negligence by building an unsafe system to control the aircraft tail stabiliser and deciding not to tell airlines and pilots of its existence until the Indonesian crash.
In an open letter to Boeing, he wrote: ‘‘Your own lawyers should be counselling you that Boeing is on public notice and that ... the arrogance of your algorithms overpowering the pilots can move law enforcement to investigate potential personal criminal negligence. Clearly, you run a company used to having its way.’’
Boeing’s failure to take swift action after the October crash compounded its dereliction, Nader said.
Boeing is to release a software remedy for pitfalls in the MCAS system next month. Along with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing insisted the airliner was completely safe until international pressure forced a global grounding last week.
‘‘They took their sweet Nader told the
‘‘The FAA also is implicated.’’ Lawsuits would expose what happened and then ‘‘all the other stuff is going to flow out’’, he said.
Boeing’s development of the Max series and its certification in close alliance with the FAA are under congressional and criminal investigation in Washington. American officials are investigating the FAA’s approval of MCAS and why the feature was not mentioned in pilots’ manuals. Nader wants Boeing executives and President Donald Trump, a strong supporter of Boeing, to testify before Congress under oath. Justice department prosecutors in Washington have issued subpoenas to people involved in the FAA’s certification of the 737 Max aircraft, CNN reported yesterday.
Boeing is installing an extra warning light in the 737 Max cockpit panel to alert pilots to anomalies in the air sensors that appear to have malfunctioned in the two crashes. time,’’