Boeing’s ‘bad’ internal emails strengthen crash victim suits

Bloomberg

Internal emails from Boeing Co employees could strengthen the legal case for families claiming the company’s push to minimise the training needed for new 737 Max aircraft contributed to two crashes that killed 346 people.
Employees bragged about fooling the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) into thinking pilots who’d flown older 737 models would need only computer training to fly the new version, emails released by the company show. Those comments support lawsuits claiming Boeing compromised safety to sell jets — and may increase its liability, said Justin Green,
an attorney representing 32 families of people who died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash last year.
“The lack of training is essential to our case,” Green said. “These documents show that Boeing led the FAA around by the nose and they confirm everything the families have alleged.”
Boeing is accused in the lawsuits of seeking to bring a new airplane to market as quickly as possible to compete with Airbus SE’s A320 neo.
Part of the purported sales pitch was that pilots who already were qualified to fly the older 737 models wouldn’t need costly and time-consuming new training for the Max.
Both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the Lion Air plane that went down in the Sea of Java in 2018 have been blamed on the 737 Max’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which caused the airplanes to dive shortly after takeoff.
Since then, all 737 Max planes were grounded, sales of Boeing jets plunged, and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg lost his job last month. The shares tumbled, and the company faces wrongful-death lawsuits filed by victims’ families that could cost $2 billion to settle, as well as legal battles with investors, pilots and workers.
Under pressure from lawmakers as it seeks to get the 737 Max flying again, Boeing disclosed a new trove of internal documents related to development of the aircraft. The company had turned them over to investigators for the FAA and Congress last month.
In one 2013 memo, a Boeing employee recommended describing MCAS as an addition to an existing speed trim system, instead of as a new feature: “If we emphasize MCAS is a new function there may be greater certification and training impact.”
In 2016, after the FAA had provisionally agreed that only computer-based training was needed for pilots transitioning from the 737 NG to the 737 Max, a Boeing employee said in an email: “You can be away from an NG for 30 years and still be able to jump into a Max? LOVE IT!!”

Reckless Disregard
The new disclosures could be quite damning for Boeing and could support claims for reckless disregard for safety, which may entitle the plaintiffs to punitive damages on top of compensation for losses, said Robert Rabin, a law professor at Stanford University.
With deliveries of new Max jets halted by the crashes and orders cancelled, Boeing disclosed that it had lost the title of world’s largest planemaker. Deliveries last year tumbled to 380 jetliners, less than half the 863 tallied by rival Airbus.