BAD DECISIONS, MISLEADING STATEMENTS AND UNREALISTIC TIMELINES COME BACK TO HAUNT BOEING
(Posted 17th December 2019)
Following the global grounding of this aircraft in March this year had Boeing repeatedly changed deadlines when their so called ‘Fix‘ of the faulty MCAS, short for Maneuvering Control Augmentation System would be ready.
In fact it is now known that following the Lion Air crash on 29th of October last year Boeing tried to fast track a software fix which would prevent further malfunctions while at the same time, in league with the FAA, heaping blame on Lion Air for the accident.
Why other airlines were not told the full truth at the time by both Boeing and the FAA is now a matter for courts to decide in both criminal and civil proceedings, but the result of the murky silence was the crash of ET302 which then finally led to regulators around the world grounding the aircraft and forcing the FAA’s hand which had strangely sat on the fence and was among the last to join the grounding orders.
Trying the same blame game with Ethiopian Airlines then led to a massive counter reaction not just from the African continent which stood united behind Ethiopian Airlines but then also triggered the process of grounding the aircraft in key jurisdictions like Europe and Asia.
At the time did Boeing float suggestions that a fix was just weeks away, but weeks turned into months when it became apparent that the fixes created yet more problems, sending the aircraft manufacturer back to the drawing board.
Damning revelations surfaced in the meantime as a result of hearings in Washington but worse, when whistleblowers spoke out and revealed the inside workings at Boeing and how clearly profit motives outranked safety considerations when the jet was rushed through a flawed certification process, as we now know.
It is now clear that the aircraft will not fly commercially fly again this year and it is anyone’s guess when re-certification will be done by the FAA and if it is still happening in January or may take even longer.
Other key global regulators will then scrutinize first the FAA process and do their own due diligence, which might affect the global lifting of the flight ban, even if the aircraft would be allowed to fly again in the US.
All these uncertainties now forced Boeing’s hand and the company just announced that come January 2020 they will halt production of the aircraft which promptly saw the share price drop by over 4.5 percent.
How the traveling public will take to the aircraft when back in operation is another question and if they demand to fly on other aircraft could Boeing see many orders for the aircraft cancelled due to the massive loss of confidence and the betrayal of trust of consumers worldwide.
