POD:BOEING WHISTLEBLOWER TALKS

Why Ed Pierson won't fly the 737 Max

I’ve been obsessed with the fall of Boeing Aircraft Corporation since the crashes of two 737 Max jets, four months apart, killing 347 people in 2018 and 2019. The Lion and Ethiopian Airlines captains and cockpit crew never stood a chance. Sadly, given the velocity of the nose-down, high-speed crashes, neither did the passengers. But they all had roughly ten seconds or so to experience the terror they they were about to die. Both catastrophes were caused by a failed sensor, tripping MCAS software, and overriding the pilot’s ability to control the plane. This was not pilot error, but greed that lead to a series of decisions sealing the fate of those planes. Here is pilot hero Sully Sullenberger testifying to congress.

Despite a temporary grounding, a multitude of tragedies have engulfed the 737 Max, including landing gear falling off in mid-air and a door blowing away at ten thousand feet. According to a recent New York Times piece, Boeing’s manufacturing and ethical lapses go back decades.

Before this month’s cabin blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 jet — which ripped the shirt off a teenage boy, damaged rows of seats near the door-sized hole and tore off part of the captain’s headset — Boeing already was reeling from a series of manufacturing flaws. Jetliner problems included improperly drilled holes, defective parts and potentially loose bolts in rudder-control systems.

Since the early 1980s, Boeing has been punished for an equally long list of ethical and criminal transgressions. They ranged from illegally snaring restricted Pentagon planning documents to stealing a rival’s rocket development plans.

After each legal stumble, Boeing had a strikingly similar response. Practically every public mea culpa by a top company executive, whether just a few months or several years apart, eventually was followed by another serious violation and even more fervent pledges to reform.

I covered Boeing for The Wall Street Journal from the 1980s through 2021. The pattern suggests to me that both production and legal woes stem from similar flaws in corporate culture. Instead of ensuring that promised internal changes were fully embraced and demonstrated through performance, the company historically behaved as though slogans, public relations efforts and bureaucratic shuffles were adequate in fixing the problems.    

As a result, Boeing’s leaders didn’t fully embrace lessons learned from previous blunders. At this point, regulators, lawmakers and passengers should question what in Boeing’s corporate DNA has mired it in severe quality-control and legal troubles. (Two crashes of a smaller 737 MAX model that claimed a total of 346 lives weren’t related to production defects.)

On this week’s show, a former Boeing high level executive who turned whistleblower tells the harrowing story of what went wrong. Ed Pierson refuses still to fly the 737 Max and believes the entire fleet should be grounded and checked-over for the kinds of sloppy and dangerous manufacturing problems causing death and fear.

Link to play podcast.

The week’s show comes in the wake of a suicide note from another whistleblower who was in the midst of giving evidence in a case against Boeing. He shot himself dead in his truck after a day of testimony — very likely as a result of years of stress related to the case. John Barnett was exposing problems with the Dreamliner — another Boeing aircraft plagued with troubles.

The death of Barnett came after weeks of Boeing making headlines over a series of safety-related issues. Here is one.

Fifty injured on Australia-New Zealand flight

A Chilean LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner on Monday dropped abruptly midair on a flight from Australia to New Zealand.

About 50 people were treated for mostly mild injuries by paramedics after the plane touched down in Auckland. Twelve people were taken to hospital, according to an ambulance spokesperson, and one was believed to be in serious condition.

The reason for the plane’s sudden drop is currently unexplained and is under investigation by New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission. Safety experts said most airplane accidents are caused by a combination of factors that need to be thoroughly investigated.

I mentioned in the podcast some good films to watch about Boeing’s collapse.

The best is on Netflix and here is the trailer:

I highly recommend this film. It is good, old fashioned muckraking and shows that those responsible belong in jail. Instead, two CEOs got huge payouts, one with a pension of 280 thousand dollars per MONTH and many million dollars in stock and cash.

Here is The Fifth Estate with a stomach turning recreation of what those poor pilots were dealing with in the seconds before they died. Really worth watching.

This is from All Jazeera on the 787 Dreamliner.

Do comment below. I will try and get Ed to answer any questions you might leave.

Coming up for premium supporters an interview about all the secret documents the government is hiding from you — what is likely in them and what we can do about it. I’m treating this as a bit of a fundraiser as we lost some followers over our Israel/Gaza coverage which ironically has turned out to be prescient— so if you haven’t gone to paid yet, please consider.

Sadly the old phrase pilots used to say to praise this once-great company — ‘if it ain’t Boeing — I ain’t going” is being rewritten.

#truthovertribe

Stay critical.