ARE SECTIONS OF THE US MEDIA NOW DOING BOEING’S DIRTY WORK?
(Posted 21st March 2019)
When a Boeing B737MAX8 of Lion Air crashed shortly after take off did it not take long for Boeing to point fingers at the airline’s management and the two pilots. They almost got away with their inexcusable behaviour, at a time when the flight data and cockpit voice recorders had not even been retrieved, because after all, a third world country with a checkered history of aviation accidents, who gives much of a damn about those other then when they sign a big fat order.
That order of course is now under intense threat as the Lion Air owners would have none of it, and are emboldened now that a second Boeing B737MAX8 accident happened under strikingly similar circumstances, just minutes after take off.
Boeing’s communication strategy over that crash lies in ruins, the company is now under official investigation as is the FAA over its approval process for the B737MAX’s while the court of public opinion has already condemned US aviation authorities for their buddy buddyship with Boeing when they delayed the grounding of all Boing B737MAX traffic into and across the United States while the rest of the world had already taken that decision.
In fact, the loss of global confidence led to the two ET302 black boxes, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, to be sent to Europe for data recovery and interpretation, breaking with a long standing tradition of handing such work to the NTSB, short for the National Transporation Safety Board in Washington DC.
Now, with Boeing – following a major loss in share value – more or less in silent mode and their FAA buddies equally tainted also gone shtumm, does it seem that a secton of the US media has taken up the mantle of trying to discredit Ethiopian Airlines.
It did not take long though for the airline, Africa’s largest and most profitable carrier, to respond and the following media release was received a short while ago:
Addis Ababa: 21 March 2019
Ethiopian Airlines would like to refute the following wrong reporting of the New York Times titled “Ethiopian Airlines Had a Max 8 Simulator, but Pilot on Doomed Flight Didn’t Receive Training”
Ethiopian Airlines, one of the safest and most dependable airlines in the world, is pleased to confirm that Ethiopian pilots have completed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved differences training from the B-737 NG aircraft to the B-737 MAX aircraft before the phase in of the B-737-800 MAX fleet to the Ethiopian operation and before they start flying the B-737-800 MAX. The pilots had also been made aware of, and well briefed on the Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued by the FAA following the Lion Air accident. The content of the airworthiness directive has also been well incorporated in all pilot training manuals, operational procedures and working manuals. The B-737 MAX full flight simulator is not designed to simulate the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) problems. Ethiopia Airlines urges all concerned to refrain from making uninformed, incorrect, irresponsible and misleading statements during the period of the accident investigation. International regulations require all stakeholders to wait patiently for the final result of the investigation.
