737 victims’ relatives seek safety changes
Two men who lost family members in the crash of a Boeing 737 Max airliner in Ethiopia called on Congress to change Federal Aviation Administration procedures that let company employees perform safety inspections on planes as they are being built.
Paul Njoroge, who lost three children, his wife and mother-in-law in the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max, accused Boeing of hiding what he considers a flaw in the plane’s design. He also accused the company of wrongly shifting blame from the plane to foreign pilots, which prevented the Max from being grounded after a first accident off the coast of Indonesia last October.
“That position killed my family and 152 others” on the second plane, said Njoroge.
Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya also died on the Ethiopian flight, told lawmakers the FAA should return to a system in which inspectors were paid by the FAA but reported to both the agency and the company.
With that structure, Stumo said, “the safety culture could put a stop to things if something looked wrong.”
Wednesday was the first time the House aviation subcommittee heard from victims’ relatives.