To date, director Rory Kennedy has not flown a Boeing 737 Max.
“As far as I know,” he tells Deadline, “I wouldn’t drive the 737 Max and I wouldn’t let my family drive the 737 Max.”
His point of view is important because Kennedy learned a lot about the plane while making his documentary on Netflix. Fall: lawsuit against Boeing. The Emmy-nominated film explores Boeing’s fateful decisions during the design and launch of the 737 Max, which led to two catastrophic disasters: the Lion Air flight from Jakarta, Indonesia in October 2018, and the Ethiopian Airlines flight from ‘Abyssinia to Abab in October 2018.. . . Between the two disasters nearly 350 passengers and crew members died.
“He knew about the first plane crash and was devastated by the loss of life,” Kennedy said. “And when another plane, the same type of plane, in a new market, crashed in five months, it really got my attention. I was very surprised by Boeing’s response, especially during the second crash, where they seemed to focus on pilot error. It just didn’t look good.
It took the hard work of reporters, including Andy Pastor The Wall Street newspaperAnd a congressional investigation led by Rep. Peter Defazio, on the true cause of the zero accident. Autumn Think carefully about what happened: Boeing found itself at a competitive disadvantage compared to Airbus, which built a fuel-efficient aircraft. To avoid the new aircraft design, Boeing rebuilt the existing 737, adding larger, more fuel-efficient engines. However, the increase in the size of the engine forced a redesign of the wings, which changed the aerodynamics of the aircraft.
To compensate for aerodynamic problems, Boeing developed the “MCAS” flight stabilization system. But the software was prone to bugs and could cause the plane to crash violently on the nose. During the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crash, the MCAS system incorrectly read the plane’s angle in the air and the planes landed on Earth.
“When it became clear enough that the MCAS system was at fault, it still didn’t make sense that the company was actually taking responsibility,” Kennedy said. “I wanted to get in touch and find out exactly what happened and who knows what when, and I tried to make a movie that would help me avoid something like that.”
Autumn It became a huge hit for Netflix, racking up 7.4 million views in the first week alone.
“It wasn’t my expectation, but it worked very well all over the world,” Kennedy said. “It has done well in Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and the United States. I think this really got on people’s nerves. “
The film partially restrains the viewer and never strays from the impact of Boeing’s decisions on real people – the families of those on doomed flights. And it contains scenes as tense as a Hollywood thriller, depicting what the pilots experienced when the MCAS system activated the alarm system and took control of the plane.
“The help was very important to me. [viewers] “Come to this booth,” said the director. “It seems like the best option was to do the CGI perfectly. This is a fully computer generated plane. We work with a great team from London to help us build it. I had never done such a job as a director, so it was difficult and very interesting to try to understand it. “
After the Lion Air incident e soon Following the Ethiopian Airlines disaster, the FAA investigated the safety of the 737 Max.
“[The FAA] He concluded that this plane is likely to crash 15 times in its life, says Kennedy, “far more than any other American commercial airliner.” And on average, you will have a “catastrophic” accident every two years: catastrophic means that everyone on the plane dies. And then the FAA and Boeing decided to keep the plane in the air until they figured out how to fix it in hopes of being able to fix it before another plane crashed. When you hear it, it’s horrible. “
This FAA analysis arises only between federal regulators and Boeing. It was not reported since the second fatal accident. (This week, the National Academy of Sciences released a report recommending that the FAA improve its aircraft risk assessment. The FAA responded by welcoming this comment.)
The incidents and their exposure shattered Boeing’s image as the leading security company. What The Wall Street newspaperThe pastor writes in the documentary: “They had the public’s trust and then two planes crashed from the sky.”
Autumn He argues that the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in 1997 resulted in a catastrophic change in corporate culture, with engineering and safety priorities emphasized primarily on profit. McDonnell-Douglas boss Harry Stonshifer, a protege of GE’s Jack Walsh, has completed his leadership at Boeing.
Stonshiffer’s business approach, Kennedy said, was to “get rid of as much company as possible, get rid of as many people as possible, not excess staff, get rid of security, get rid of that oversight.” “Focus only on the profits and value of Wall Street.”
The company paid more than $ 2.5 billion in fines to settle charges stemming from the 737 Max’s design and fatal accident investigation. By the end of 2020, the FAA had recertified the 737 Max for flight. the European Aviation Safety Agency and Transport Canada).
Since the FAA decided to recertify the 737 Max, United Airlines and Southwest are among the airlines that have ordered hundreds of aircraft. But Kennedy isn’t convinced that Max, despite correcting the MCAS software, is safe.
“[Congressman] Defazio in his investigation – the largest in the history of the Transport Infrastructure Committee – concluded that there was a “climate of deception”. [at Boeing]”- says Kennedy. “I haven’t seen any significant changes from my point of view. The pilots I interviewed for the film advised almost everyone not to get on the 737 Max. “
Boeing insists it is committed to safety. According to a section of the company’s website titled “Our Values,” Boeing says, “A strong engineering foundation enables us to build and maintain our products safely, with factory quality and integrity, and service … in all of it. what are we doing”. we do it and in all aspects “. of our business “. Companies, we make safety our top priority … [and] Respect the highest ethical standards … “
Source: Deadline
