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Speaker 1: Yoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special

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Speaker 1: of The Front Page, The Ends At Herald's daily news podcast.

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Speaker 1: While the Front Page is on summer break, we're taking

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Speaker 1: a look back at some of the biggest news stories

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Speaker 1: and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.

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Speaker 1: New episodes will return on January thirteenth. It's safe to

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Speaker 1: say that in recent years Boeing has gone through a

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Speaker 1: patch of turbulence. In twenty twenty four alone, we saw

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Speaker 1: a door plug blow off mid flight on an Alaska

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Speaker 1: Airline's Boeing seven three seven Max nine in January, while

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Speaker 1: closer to home, a Latame Airline's flight from Sydney to

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Speaker 1: Auckland plunged mid air, injuring at least fifty passengers. In

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Speaker 1: October twenty eighteen, Lion airflight six ' ten crashed into

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Speaker 1: the Java Sea in Indonesia with one hundred and eighty

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Speaker 1: nine people on board. It was a Boeing seven three

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Speaker 1: seven Max, and barely five months later, an Ethiopian Airlines

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Speaker 1: Boeing Max aircraft crashed, killing one hundred and fifty seven people.

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Speaker 1: One of those people was Graziela de Luis Yaponts, a

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Speaker 1: United Nations interpreter. Her brother is MIT's Department of Aeronautics

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Speaker 1: and Astronautics lecturer Javier de Luise. He served on the

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Speaker 1: US Federal Aviation Administration's panel that reviewed Boeing's safety practices

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Speaker 1: last year. We spoke to Haveavier in March about what's

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Speaker 1: gone wrong and what should change at Boeing. The latest

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Speaker 1: issue on the Latam flight is one in a series

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Speaker 1: of issues that have popped up for Boeing in recent memory. Javier,

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Speaker 1: what's going on here?

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Speaker 2: Well, Solsey, I think it's important that we split the

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Speaker 2: issues that come up into two buckets.

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Speaker 3: Okay.

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Speaker 2: The first bucket is the issues that arise from laws

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Speaker 2: in the design, laws in the manufacturing, mistakes that are made,

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Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Among those issues would be things

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Speaker 2: like the mcast system that crash the two planes five

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Speaker 2: years ago, the problems with anti icing, and the engines

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Speaker 2: that if it's left on too long, the engine that

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Speaker 2: sells could crack. Those kinds of things, the mis drilled holes.

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Speaker 2: Then there are the other ones that are sort of

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Speaker 2: one of the things, you know, mistakes happen, and maintenance mistakes,

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Speaker 2: happen because someone bumps into a switch or something like that,

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Speaker 2: which is apparently what the last time thing was due to.

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Speaker 3: And those, I mean, I.

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Speaker 2: Don't want to say that they're okay and that they're normal,

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Speaker 2: but they're not as fundamentally problematic as the first kind.

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Speaker 2: The first kind really shouldn't happen and when identified need

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Speaker 2: to be corrected as soon as possible. The second kind, well,

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Speaker 2: things are going to have happen. And we're now focused

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Speaker 2: on anything having to do with Boeing and the Max

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Speaker 2: and any Boeing airplane. Very spotlight is on, so we

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Speaker 2: clearly are paying more attention to them. But airplanes run

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Speaker 2: off runways all the time. There are hydraulic failures all

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Speaker 2: the time. They're not supposed to happen, but when they

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Speaker 2: do happen, if an airplane is properly designed, they should

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Speaker 2: be able to deal with it, and for the most

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Speaker 2: part they do. For the fundamental flawed ones that that's

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Speaker 2: a different animal altogether.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I hope you don't mind me mentioning as well,

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Speaker 1: But you lost a loved one in a Boeing incident,

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Speaker 1: didn't you.

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Speaker 2: Yes, my sister was on the Ethiopia crash for the

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Speaker 2: Max five years ago. It was five years ago last

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Speaker 2: Sunday Action, and you know, since then, I've sort of

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Speaker 2: I've been working with a bunch of families that lost

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Speaker 2: people on that flight to try to make sure that

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Speaker 2: this kind of stuff doesn't happen again. And my background

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Speaker 2: is I'm an aerospace engineer. I spent my career in

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Speaker 2: aerospace engineer. I have a doctorate from am IT and

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Speaker 2: here in Cambridge, and I've been trying to sort of

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Speaker 2: help the families understand the technical side as much as

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Speaker 2: I can, and also trying to win able. I'm trying

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Speaker 2: to have input into how changes that are getting made

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Speaker 2: in order to prevent this from happening. Just recently, I

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Speaker 2: completed work on an FAA expert panel that was set

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Speaker 2: up by Congress that went in and looked at Boeing's

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Speaker 2: safety culture and the way that they are manufacturing airplanes

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Speaker 2: and how they're being inspected. My fellow panels and I

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Speaker 2: spent about a year looking at this, and we just

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Speaker 2: submitted the report to Congress two weeks ago.

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Speaker 4: Boeing's seven three seven Max production process has dozens of

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Speaker 4: issues with quality control. That's according to the New York Times,

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Speaker 4: reporting on Monday on an audit from the Federal Aviation Administration.

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Speaker 4: The paper said the aerospace giant failed thirty three out

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Speaker 4: of eighty nine product tests for the Max, including checks

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Speaker 4: on the component that blew up the jets, known as

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Speaker 4: a door plug.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the report seems like it's highly critical of

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Speaker 1: Boeing's safety culture and a number of fronts. Hey and

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Speaker 1: found a lack of awareness of safety related metrics on

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Speaker 1: kind of all levels of the organization. How did Boeing

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Speaker 1: respond to that and to the panel's recommendations.

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Speaker 3: Well, the FA administrator gave them ninety days to come

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Speaker 3: up with the plan.

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Speaker 2: They said they appreciate the work, you know, they said

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Speaker 2: the thing that you would expect them to say. We'll

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Speaker 2: have to see whether they implement the recommendations. I think

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Speaker 2: the biggest recommendation that we had, or the biggest finding

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Speaker 2: that we had, I should say, is that we saw

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Speaker 2: a disconnect between the words that are being said by

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Speaker 2: upper level Boeing management and what is being really perceived

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Speaker 2: and believed at the ground level, at the worker level,

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Speaker 2: at the engineer level, you know, they hear, yes, safety

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Speaker 2: is our number one priorities, Safety's job one, and they

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Speaker 2: say yeah, until we fall behind on the line and

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Speaker 2: then they's just pushing on the door. They stay here, Oh,

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Speaker 2: you should report things we want to hear about problems.

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Speaker 2: You won't be punished.

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Speaker 5: And then they.

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Speaker 2: See, well, yes, but my buddy brought up an issue

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Speaker 2: and now he's been let go. And those are the

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Speaker 2: stories that we heard and talking to people and the

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Speaker 2: surveys that we conducted. And that's problematic because you know,

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Speaker 2: it's not words, it has to be actions.

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Speaker 3: And the words are fine.

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Speaker 2: They're being told safety's job one and report things that

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Speaker 2: are wrong, et cetera, et cetera. But if if the

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Speaker 2: people that work for you don't believe you, that's a

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Speaker 2: real fundamental problem and that has to be addressed.

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Speaker 1: In terms of safety measures with Boeing as well. I mean,

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Speaker 1: they're essentially left by regulators to self police, right, so

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Speaker 1: they get to kind of choose what their safety measures

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Speaker 1: are and how they get up to scratch. I guess

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Speaker 1: is that a flaw that's.

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Speaker 3: Not quite correct.

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Speaker 2: For decades, the FAA has sort of deputize, let's call

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Speaker 2: it deputized BOI personnel to act on behalf of the

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Speaker 2: FAA in the engineering, design and manufacturing process.

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Speaker 3: And the reason that they do this is because the

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Speaker 3: FA doesn't have enough people to do all this.

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Speaker 2: They could obviously hire more, but you know there's federal

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Speaker 2: budgets and all that sort of stuff.

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Speaker 3: So for decades this has been the way it's been done.

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Speaker 2: The problem has been that over the last fifteen years

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Speaker 2: or so, more and more functions have been delegated over

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Speaker 2: to boying personnel, and that pendulum swung way way in

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Speaker 2: that direction and the interest of you know, efficiency and competitiveness.

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Speaker 3: And clearly during the development of the.

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Speaker 2: MAX for example, that the FASIO reports that came out

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Speaker 2: of Congress and the FAA investigations all showed that there

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Speaker 2: was what we referred to as undue influence on these

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Speaker 2: people that are supposed to be acting on the faas

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Speaker 2: in other words, on the public's behalf. In other words,

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Speaker 2: they were supposed to, you know, review a design and

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Speaker 2: if they found a flaw in the design, they someone

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Speaker 2: would come up and say, hey, you want don't you

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Speaker 2: take a look at that again, and you know this

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Speaker 2: is important. Maybe you can see it a little differently,

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Speaker 2: and you know, there's the sort of pressure that was

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Speaker 2: applied and that's obviously not good, and so now the

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Speaker 2: pendulum is beginning to swing in the other direction.

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Speaker 3: And we saw that there.

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Speaker 2: Were improvements when compared to what it was prior to

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Speaker 2: the MAX crashes. But yet still there was opportunity for

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Speaker 2: retaliation when it came time for salary raises or rankings

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Speaker 2: in your division to see, you know, if there were layoffs,

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Speaker 2: who would get laid out first.

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Speaker 3: For all those sorts of things, there was still an opportunity.

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Speaker 2: For these deputized personnel to be retaliated against in case

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Speaker 2: they made decisions and they made findings that went against

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Speaker 2: Boyante's interests.

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Speaker 6: New information in the death of Boeing whistle blower John Barnett,

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Speaker 6: A close family friend of Barnett, says he predicted he

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Speaker 6: might wind up dead.

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Speaker 1: I think somebody didn't like what he had to say

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Speaker 1: and wanted to shut him up.

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Speaker 6: Jennifer knew he filed an extremely damaging complaint against Boeing.

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Speaker 6: He says the aerospace giant retaliated against him when he

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Speaker 6: blew the whistle on unsafe practices.

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Speaker 2: So that's a problem, and that was one of our

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Speaker 2: major findings in our report. So the regulations are set

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Speaker 2: by the FAA. Boeing personnel have to are responsible for

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Speaker 2: checking the analyses and the tests to make sure that

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Speaker 2: those regulations are complied with.

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Speaker 1: Isn't that something that's happened within the last fifteen years.

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Speaker 2: Well, No, that deputization that I've been referring to has

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Speaker 2: been around since the nineteen twenties. It was done more

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Speaker 2: on an individual basis up until about fifteen years ago.

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Speaker 2: Up until about fifteen years ago, it was individuals at

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Speaker 2: Boeing that we said, you you missed an engineer. You

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Speaker 2: are going to now work for the FAA. Even though

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Speaker 2: your paycheck's going to be from Boeing. You're going to

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Speaker 2: talk to the FAA and you're going to report to

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Speaker 2: the FAA. And that's the way it was. And about

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Speaker 2: fifteen years ago it changed to be more organizational instead

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Speaker 2: of individuals. It's the Boeing with organization within Boeing that

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Speaker 2: is now responsible for doing things. And what the previous

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Speaker 2: reports found after MAX crashes was that there are too

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Speaker 2: many opportunities for mischief. There, there's too many opportunities for

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Speaker 2: undue influence.

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Speaker 3: And the law was.

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Speaker 2: Changed to require the FAA to delegate less activities and

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Speaker 2: to pull back somebody's functions and to split make more

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Speaker 2: clear that the people that are working as designies as

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Speaker 2: delegates for the fa are working for the FAA, not

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Speaker 2: for Boeing. That has to be clear, and for the

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Speaker 2: most part, our panel found that people understand that the

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Speaker 2: problem was that there's still opportunities for retaliation and influence

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Speaker 2: and those have to be cleaned up if the system's

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Speaker 2: going to work, those have to be cleaned up. Now

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Speaker 2: they're talking now about bringing in a third party, another

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Speaker 2: organization to act as the people that would be checking

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Speaker 2: the requirements and things like that, and that would obviously

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Speaker 2: be better in terms of ensuring independence, but that doesn't

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Speaker 2: happen overnight, and that's a long term process.

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Speaker 1: Is part of the problem also that there's not much competition,

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Speaker 1: only really two major airplane manufacturers. We've got Boeing and Airbus.

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Speaker 1: So even if people are concerned with Boeing, I guess

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Speaker 1: airlines don't easily have the option of changing who they

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Speaker 1: work with. There's not that competitiveness to make a product

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Speaker 1: that is elite.

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Speaker 3: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 2: If you're starting up an airline, you go and try

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Speaker 2: to buy an airbus, your delivery will be like five

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Speaker 2: six years down the line. I mean, there is such

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Speaker 2: a backlog in terms of manufacturing that there is no competition.

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Speaker 2: You basically go to air Bus, go to Boeing, and

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Speaker 2: you take what they give you. So if people wanted

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Speaker 2: to steer away from one or the other, they would

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Speaker 2: be looking at schedules that would be five, six, seven

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Speaker 2: years in the future, and that's just not economically viable.

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Speaker 2: So people go and buy what they can get, and

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Speaker 2: they pretty much will sell any airplane that comes off

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Speaker 2: the line because there's such a huge demand for airplanes

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Speaker 2: in the post COVID era as the world opened up again.

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Speaker 2: That's all we're seeing. But you know, Boeing has lost

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Speaker 2: their lead, right They're no longer the leading commercial airplane

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Speaker 2: maker in the world. It's now Airbus by quite a margin.

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Speaker 2: And we'll see whether how long Going continues to hold

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Speaker 2: the second place position because there are other competitors coming

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Speaker 2: up to line.

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Speaker 1: How is your experience losing your sister, I guess merged

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Speaker 1: with your expertise in aeronautics. You mentioned before that you've

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Speaker 1: kind of taken the role of explaining kind of the

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Speaker 1: technicalities to the families, which I'm sure that they are

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Speaker 1: very grateful for given the complexities of it and your

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Speaker 1: experience and your expertise is quite an interesting juxtaposition in

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Speaker 1: a sense, right, And has it guided how you go

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Speaker 1: about your research into Boeing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been quite difficult. I should say that I've

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Speaker 2: tried to help the families, and initially that's what was

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Speaker 2: my role.

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Speaker 3: Since we started, we've been joined by several other engineers

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Speaker 3: that used.

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Speaker 2: To work for the FA, used to work for Warning,

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Speaker 2: that are much more knowledgeable than me, and so they've

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Speaker 2: really been great in helping us understand what's going on.

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Speaker 2: But as far as I'm concerned, I often say that

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Speaker 2: I'm sort of cursed with knowing a bit too much.

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Speaker 2: I know how this stuff happened. I know how it

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Speaker 2: should have happened. I can clearly see that there's no

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Speaker 2: excuse for the kind of stuff that we saw on

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Speaker 2: the Max or the kind of stuff that we're still

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Speaker 2: seeing on the MAX. It seems like the first response

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Speaker 2: whenever there's any engineering problem is to ask for an

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Speaker 2: exemption from the rule, and that's not right. The first

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Speaker 2: response when there's an engineering problem, there's a manufacturing problem,

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Speaker 2: should be to fix it, not to say, oh, it's okay,

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Speaker 2: it's just as safe as if we had complied with

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Speaker 2: the rule. That really bugs me because FAA regulations, there's

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Speaker 2: a saying that FAA regulations are written in blood. Someone died,

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Speaker 2: some other people figured out why they died, and then

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Speaker 2: we wrote rules so that no one dies again, and

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Speaker 2: to not comply with the rules, and they keep asking

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Speaker 2: for exemptions as an insult to the people that died

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Speaker 2: and to the people that did all the work to

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Speaker 2: find out what happened so that.

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Speaker 3: It wouldn't happen again. So that really upsets me.

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Speaker 2: Apart from the personal loss of losing my sister, that

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Speaker 2: just really upsets me that that's the path that seems

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Speaker 2: to be the preferred path for this company as it

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Speaker 2: built there.

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Speaker 1: And as you say, there's obviously manufacturing and safety faults

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Speaker 1: within some of these instances. But going back to the

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Speaker 1: Latam flight that happened here from Sydney to Auckland obviously

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Speaker 1: plunged mid air, which would have been absolutely frightening for

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Speaker 1: those passengers on board.

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Speaker 5: Apparently the plane dropped over five hundred feet in an instant.

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Speaker 5: It was almost like getting to the top of a

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Speaker 5: roller coaster then you're headed down. At that point, I

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Speaker 5: thought this is it. There was chaos going on all

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Speaker 5: around us.

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Speaker 2: And mister Jocko, when he was getting off the plane,

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Speaker 2: he saw the pilot and he approached.

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Speaker 3: The pilot and said what happened?

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Speaker 4: And the pilot said to him, my gauge is just

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Speaker 4: blacked out.

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Speaker 2: I lost all of my ability to fly the plane.

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Speaker 1: I now think it may have been. Yeah, you mentioned

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Speaker 1: like a switch or something. I mean, I'm obviously not

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Speaker 1: an aerospace engineer or I have any business in building airplanes,

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Speaker 1: but I would kind of make sure that a switch

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Speaker 1: like that couldn't be bumped.

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Speaker 3: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 2: And you bring up an excellent point, which is that

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Speaker 2: sometimes when these sort of accidents happen, you know, you

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Speaker 2: got to look for why did it happen? You know,

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Speaker 2: why did four bolts get not put onto a door

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Speaker 2: at the point back? Why did that happen? And you

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Speaker 2: can say, well, a mistake was made, someone forgot to

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Speaker 2: do it, But well, I would ask, as an engineer,

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Speaker 2: I would ask, why are those bolts able to be

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Speaker 2: removed from that door in the first place? Why aren't

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Speaker 2: they captured? Why aren't they hanging there so that anybody

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Speaker 2: that's doing it would clearly see that these four boats

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Speaker 2: are not attached. Right, what you would just mention is

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Speaker 2: the same thing. You would think that if a switch

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Speaker 2: can be easily bumped, then the right answer isn't to

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Speaker 2: say to the flight attendants of the pilots, don't bump

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Speaker 2: the switch. The right answer is to move the switch,

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Speaker 2: or put a cover on the switch, or do something

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Speaker 2: to prevent somebody from bumping it. And that is the

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Speaker 2: overwhelmingly preferred solution. It often happens to be the more

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Speaker 2: expensive solution, which is why a lot of times when

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Speaker 2: these things happen, all you get is a notice to

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Speaker 2: airman or whatever, a notice that says, hey, don't bump

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Speaker 2: the switch, and that's not right. It should be a

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Speaker 2: fix that makes it impossible to bump.

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Speaker 3: The search.

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Speaker 1: And as part of the FAA's panel obviously you mentioned

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Speaker 1: days Boeing has to kind of get it back together.

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Speaker 1: What happens then do you go in and check what

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Speaker 1: kind of processes they've done. I don't know what it's

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Speaker 1: like in the US, but sometimes recommendations go out to

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Speaker 1: say big companies here, and the recommendation might be, you know,

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Speaker 1: to better enhance safety procedures, and then they go back

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Speaker 1: in six months and see that there's been a training

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Speaker 1: in place to better safety procedures, and they go, oh, well, tick,

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Speaker 1: is that something that's likely to happen over there?

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Speaker 2: That was actually one of our recommendations is that there'd

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Speaker 2: be a periodic six month review of where they are

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Speaker 2: and what they've done and whether they're implementing the changes

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Speaker 2: that we recommend that.

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Speaker 3: I don't think it'll be us that'll do it. I

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Speaker 3: think it would be the FAA that will be doing.

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Speaker 2: Our panel or sort of cease to exist when we

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Speaker 2: submitted the report, but that was one of our recommendations

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Speaker 2: that we're hoping will be followed.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, have youer? That's it for this

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Speaker 1: episode of The Front Page. You can read more about

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Speaker 1: today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzedherld dot co

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Speaker 1: dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Siles

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Speaker 1: with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to

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Speaker 1: the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,

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Speaker 1: and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.