Consumer Advocacy Group Challenges 737 MAX Ungrounding

FlyersRights.org, the airline passengers’ consumer advocacy group, has filed a notice of appeal in the District of Columbia Circuit of Appeals challenging the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision last month to re-certify the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

The 737 MAX suffered two horrific accidents within a span of five months when a Lion Air flight crashed in October of 2018 in Indonesia, and an Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed in March of 2019. Some 346 passengers and crew were killed, and the plane was grounded worldwide after the second incident.

Initially, investigators found a software issue that put the 737 MAX into a fatal nosedive instead of responding as it should, which was to slowly keep the plane steady to prevent the pilot from mistakenly pulling up and causing the plane to stall.

Paul Hudson, President of FlyersRights.org, is one of four named plaintiffs in the appeals challenge.

“Boeing and FAA first declared the MAX safe in 2017, then again a second time after the first crash in October 2018, and then incredibly a third time after the second crash in March 2019,” Hudson said in a statement. “Now the FAA and Boeing have declared it safe a fourth time, based off of secret data and secret testing that is clearly legally inadequate.“

FlyersRights alleges that the FAA made a capricious decision to approve the fixes to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) without turning over any evidence.

“After reneging on their multiple 2019 transparency pledges to Congress under oath, to the public, and to shareholders, the FAA and Boeing now insist that the public should trust them this time, all based on secret data and secret testing by anonymous employees,” Hudson charged. “Meanwhile dozens of questions and concerns raised by independent aviation experts have gone unanswered. Pilot retraining has been roundly criticized as inadequate.”

A 2017 D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision held 3-0 that a federal agency cannot base a decision on secret data and testing (Flyers Rights Education Fund v. FAA, 16-1101 (D.C. Cir.)). That case also pertained to important safety issues, emergency evacuation testing and seat sizes.