Are larger powers or Boeing behind a report published by the Washington Post based on something that happened in 2015 before the Boeing MAX 8 was in use, and now mingled with Ethiopian Airlines crash. The situation is not only a public relations disaster for Boeing but may turn into a fight of survival, avoiding criminal charges and about keeping the companies reputation.
The WashPoston Post today reported about two pilots filed complaints with the Federal Aviation Administration about allegedly flawed training programs and poor safety procedures at Ethiopian Airlines years before a Boeing 737 Max commercial jet crashed in Ethiopia with 157 people on board last week, according to a Federal Aviation Administration database.
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The 2015 complaints, filed before the Max 8 was in use, are critical of training and pilot documentation on the 737 in use at the time, as well as two larger Boeing planes.
Ethiopian Airlines may be based in a country many say is the third world, but the company had responded in a first world style, professional, and immediately without pointing fingers.
Today Ethiopian Airlines didn’t fall for higher powers trying to confuse the issue in the investigation.
A question becomes more pressing? Did this accident have to happen? Did 156 passengers and crew have to die on the Boeing MAX 8 jet?
The investigation and fault point more and more to the U.S. manufacturer. Pilots had been accusing Boeing of criminal negligence and indirectly so is Ethiopian Airlines. The FBI is involved in establishing if there was a criminal case against Boeing.
The report in the Washington Post today about unrelated issues taking away from the issue at hand may not be coincident.
Ethiopian Airlines issued a statement on the Washington Post article today:
Ethiopian Airlines strongly refutes all the baseless and factually incorrect allegations written in the Washington Post dated March 21, 2019.
All the allegations in the article are false defamations with out any evidence, collected from unknown and unreliable sources and meant to divert attention from the global grounding of the B-737 MAX airplanes.
Ethiopian airlines operates with one of the highest global standards of quality and safety performances certified by all National, Regional and International regulators like the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority, the FAA, EASA, IOSA and ICAO and other National regulatory authorities. Ethiopian is one of the leading global airlines with modern fleet, high standards of infrastructure, highly automated with the latest ICT (information and communication technology) and one of the most modern operating systems.
The airline has seven full-flight simulators (Q-400, B-737NG, B-737 MAX, B-767, B-787, B-777 and A-350) to train its pilots and other airlines pilots. It has one of the largest and most modern Aviation Academy with training devices and technologies among the very few in the world. The Airline has invested more than half a Billion dollars in infrastructure only in the last 5 years which is not common in a typical airline.
Although the cause of the accident is yet to be known by the international investigation in progress, the entire world knows all B-737 MAX airplanes have been grounded since the tragic accident of ET 302/10 March. About 380 B-737 MAX airplanes are grounded all over the world including in the USA. All concerned regulators, Safety oversight authorities and other law enforcement agencies are conducting serious investigation on the design and certification of the B-737 MAX airplanes and we are waiting patiently for the result of these investigations.
This being the fact, the subject article is trying to divert the main focus of the world to unrelated and factually incorrect allegations.
We hereby demand the Washington Post to remove the article, apologize and correct the facts.
