Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Just moments after taking
Speaker 1: off on Thursday, an Air India flight bound for London
Speaker 1: from an airport in western India crashed with over two
Speaker 1: hundred passengers on board. The Boeing seven eighty seven Dreamliner
Speaker 1: jet crashed into a dining hall at a medical school
Speaker 1: while students were eating lunch. The cause is still unknown
Speaker 1: and officials are still assessing the extent of the casualties,
Speaker 1: though there are reports of at least one survivor. It's
Speaker 1: the latest in a series of high profile commercial plane
Speaker 1: crashes and safety incidents that have put passengers on edge,
Speaker 1: and it's the first fatal crash to involve a Boeing
Speaker 1: seven eighty seven Dreamliner, putting Boeing's safety record back in
Speaker 1: the spotlight. Benedicaml at its Bloomberg's aviation coverage, and he
Speaker 1: says the incident comes at a pivotal moment for Boeing,
Speaker 1: whose new CEO has been trying to regain the public
Speaker 1: trust after a series of safety incidents involving the company's planes.
Speaker 2: All of these things he's done. Whether this will now
Speaker 2: get sabotaged by this accidents too soon to say A
Speaker 2: lot of that will ride on what conclusions we can
Speaker 2: draw from the accident.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News today on the show What we know so
Speaker 1: far about the Air India tragedy, What the Dreamliner crash
Speaker 1: means for Boeing and for the commercial aviation industry. So, Benedict,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. What do we
Speaker 1: know about the Air India crash so far?
Speaker 2: So this aircraft, which is a Boeing seven eight to
Speaker 2: seven Dreamline, it's a fairly advanced plane, almost twelve years old.
Speaker 2: This is a plane that crashed just after taking off
Speaker 2: in India. It was bound for London Gatwick Airport, was
Speaker 2: due to land that tonight. Had two hundred and forty
Speaker 2: two people on board, that is and crew two very
Speaker 2: experienced pilots, and footage that we've seen so far indicates
Speaker 2: that the plane was still in takeoff mode, very low
Speaker 2: off the ground, just sort of over a couple of
Speaker 2: houses and then sort of started descending again. It almost
Speaker 2: looked as if it were landing. But then the next
Speaker 2: image you see on the footage is of a giant
Speaker 2: plume of smoke and essentially the plane going up in
Speaker 2: a huge ball of flames. All we know is that
Speaker 2: it doesn't look like it was sort of an external
Speaker 2: strike of some sort.
Speaker 1: Well, what do we know about the extent of the
Speaker 1: casualties at this point in the day, both on the
Speaker 1: plane and on the ground.
Speaker 2: The plane did crash into a very densely populated part
Speaker 2: of the city, and so you can expect fully fueled,
Speaker 2: fully loaded seven eight seven, which is a huge aircraft
Speaker 2: landing or crashing into a residential area that will lead
Speaker 2: to casualties on the ground as well. The first proper
Speaker 2: official figure that we got from authorities was that just
Speaker 2: over two hundred people and bodies have been retrieved from
Speaker 2: the wreckage. Now, of those, we don't know how many
Speaker 2: were on the plane, how many might have been people
Speaker 2: on the ground, But obviously this is a huge number
Speaker 2: and you should expect that number to rise.
Speaker 1: There's a lot we don't know about what actually caused
Speaker 1: this crash. But what do we know so far based
Speaker 1: on the data we got from the plane before it
Speaker 1: went down.
Speaker 2: So we know that the plane was in takeoff mode
Speaker 2: and it had just started its ascent, so it was
Speaker 2: about six hundred feet in the air at that point.
Speaker 2: It's twin engine aircraft. We don't know whether the engines
Speaker 2: were fully functional, or whether one of the engines had failed,
Speaker 2: or maybe even both of the engines at that point
Speaker 2: of the departure. This is generally considered one of the
Speaker 2: riskier moments of an aircraft journey. It's the takeoff and
Speaker 2: the landing part where most things can go wrong. The
Speaker 2: plane is fully loaded, the plane is fully fueled, it's
Speaker 2: very heavy. The airport from where it was taking off
Speaker 2: is known to how have a bit of a bird issue.
Speaker 2: There are large flocks of birds in the vicinity. Now
Speaker 2: this is pure speculation. We have absolutely no indication yet
Speaker 2: that birds strike, as it's called, was a cause here,
Speaker 2: But this is something that the authorities will be looking at.
Speaker 2: The footage does not seem to reveal an obvious engine fault.
Speaker 2: Sometimes in the past, when you have seen engines failing,
Speaker 2: you see flames bursting out of the back or a
Speaker 2: plume of smoke coming out of the engine. That's not
Speaker 2: the case here. So we have what looks like a
Speaker 2: clean takeoff. It looks like the main flaps of the
Speaker 2: wings are not extended, so you have a clean aircraft.
Speaker 2: The other big thing that will help is the retrieval
Speaker 2: of what's called the black boxes. So those are the
Speaker 2: data recorders that store the main flight parameters. Those are
Speaker 2: the recorders that store the cockpit conversations, and those usually
Speaker 2: give very good clues as to what might have happened.
Speaker 2: One final thing to add is there was a may
Speaker 2: day call from the cockpit shortly after takeoff. We don't
Speaker 2: know what it said, but clearly the pilot, who we
Speaker 2: know was very experienced, saw that something was dramatically wrong
Speaker 2: and that led to the may day call. All these
Speaker 2: things will have to get read out. Typically these types
Speaker 2: of investigations can take days, if not months, for a
Speaker 2: proper readout and then a final report that can really
Speaker 2: take a long time.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible tragedy. When is the last time an
Speaker 1: airplane crash of this scale happened?
Speaker 2: You really have to look quite far back, and more
Speaker 2: than ten years. So there was the Malaysian Airlines aircraft
Speaker 2: MH seventeen that was shot down over Ukraine by suspected
Speaker 2: Russian missile that caused almost three hundred deaths, and then
Speaker 2: Air India has not had a tragedy of this scale
Speaker 2: all the way back to the mid nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 2: that really gives you an indication of how rare these
Speaker 2: occurrences are. We have had an increase in air accidents
Speaker 2: in the last couple of months, and looking back into
Speaker 2: the last year, there has in a greater number of those.
Speaker 2: But overall, this remains a very safe mode of travel.
Speaker 2: But people, obviously, when they see this, they think that
Speaker 2: this is something that is on the rise. There are
Speaker 2: more incidents, there are more accidents, but something of this
Speaker 2: scale with more than two hundred dead people with a modern,
Speaker 2: very well maintained aircraft with an experienced crew, that obviously
Speaker 2: is an anomaly. Typically, what happens in these scenarios is
Speaker 2: that the crash investigators take over. So you will have
Speaker 2: the local investigators leading the charge. You will have police,
Speaker 2: you will have the army, you will have a salvage mission.
Speaker 2: First of all, all the focus and right now will
Speaker 2: be on can we find survivors and then can we
Speaker 2: retrieve parts of the wreckage that will help us solve
Speaker 2: what led to this. So the NTSB, which is the
Speaker 2: US investigating authority, they are dispatching a team there. The
Speaker 2: FAA they're doing the same. Boeing will surely have a
Speaker 2: team they will send over that. So this is very
Speaker 2: much sort of a technical analysis this point. Erindia obviously
Speaker 2: will have the role, should we say, with the more
Speaker 2: humanitarian side of this, to really look after families who
Speaker 2: are now wondering might my relative on the plane have survived,
Speaker 2: and to people who have, you know, the sad assurance
Speaker 2: that people have not survived, to look after them. But
Speaker 2: really the focus right now is on search and rescue,
Speaker 2: retrieval and everything else follows.
Speaker 1: After that, after the break Boeing's safety record and how
Speaker 1: the Dreamliner crash could add to growing passenger anxiety about
Speaker 1: airline safety. I'm sitting down with Bloomberg's Benedict Camel in
Speaker 1: the wake of the Air India tragedy. Benedict, let's talk
Speaker 1: about what all this means for Boeing, because it's just
Speaker 1: the latest in a string of safety issues on Boeing planes.
Speaker 1: One recent, much less serious issue I'm thinking of happened
Speaker 1: last year when the door of a Boeing plane headed
Speaker 1: from Oregon to California came off mid flight. So many
Speaker 1: viral videos of that. Can you refresh us on Boeing's
Speaker 1: recent safety record.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the safety record has obviously been problematic for Boeing.
Speaker 2: You reference this one example, and yes there were no
Speaker 2: fatalities in that incident, but it really sort of blew
Speaker 2: the cover, as it were, off the safety lapses at Boeing,
Speaker 2: at the manufacturing lapses, and it really led the public
Speaker 2: but also authorities to rethink a sort of Boeing safety
Speaker 2: standards and their manufacturing standards. So Boeing really slogged through
Speaker 2: a very very difficult year after that. They had a
Speaker 2: cap of the number of aircraft that they can produce.
Speaker 2: The FAA said, you can make thirty eight seven three
Speaker 2: sevens at a maximum per month. No more than that.
Speaker 2: We want to make sure that you've got your sequencies
Speaker 2: in your factory set up. We don't want you to
Speaker 2: rush things. It cost Boing huge amounts of customer trust.
Speaker 2: It cost Boing both with the public but also with
Speaker 2: aline customers. It costs them huge amounts of money They
Speaker 2: had to go to the market and raise and all
Speaker 2: of this happened after two fatal crashes towards the end
Speaker 2: of twenty eighteen one In twenty nineteen, so Boeing has
Speaker 2: had a sequence of events that really, as I said,
Speaker 2: shone the spotlight on the manufacturing, on the systems at
Speaker 2: Boeing that were really subpar. This event here involves a
Speaker 2: different aircraft. The ones I just reference were all about
Speaker 2: the seven three seven as a sort of small Boeing
Speaker 2: that most of us go on for short hops from
Speaker 2: one city to the next. This is the seven eight
Speaker 2: seven Dreamliner that's usually used on long international routes. So
Speaker 2: this is the first time that Boeing or an airliner
Speaker 2: has lost a seven eight seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me more about that aircraft that was involved
Speaker 1: in this crash, the Boeing seven eighty seven eight Dreamliner.
Speaker 1: What is its safety record? What do we know about
Speaker 1: that aircraft?
Speaker 2: Well, this aircraft's safety record has lately been really stellar.
Speaker 2: It's a very popular aircraft for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2: It has a good size, so popular on long routes.
Speaker 2: More than one thousand units have been sold. It had
Speaker 2: a shaky start when it was introduced, or even before
Speaker 2: it was introduced in twenty eleven, because it really pushed
Speaker 2: the envelope on a lot of the technology. But once
Speaker 2: it was out it did mainly very well. It was
Speaker 2: briefly grounded because of some issues with batteries and the
Speaker 2: fear of that they might catch fire. But once that
Speaker 2: issue was out of the way, this is an aircraft
Speaker 2: that has done very well. It's really sold in very
Speaker 2: large numbers, and it has a really good safety record
Speaker 2: and the fact that no seven eighty seven has ever
Speaker 2: been lost in an accent is testament to that. So
Speaker 2: it's a very important aircraft for Boeing. It makes a
Speaker 2: lot of cash for the company. The seven three seven
Speaker 2: Max took on sort of the image of a not
Speaker 2: so trustworthy aircraft. That's not been the case with the
Speaker 2: seven eight seven that's still considered sort of gold standard
Speaker 2: in its class.
Speaker 1: Well. A former Boeing worker, John Barnett, did raise concerns
Speaker 1: about the Dreamliner. What were those concerns?
Speaker 2: He's not the only one. There have been a number
Speaker 2: of whistleblowers that have come out and have said the
Speaker 2: way that Boeing assembles this aircraft is subpar, that cutting corners,
Speaker 2: and that really the plane should be reviewed, that the
Speaker 2: FAA should take a much closer look. A lot of
Speaker 2: this goes back to sort of the interaction between the
Speaker 2: authorities and Boeing. There was a sense that for too
Speaker 2: long the FAA let Boeing sort of self police itself
Speaker 2: and that they could really sort of look after their
Speaker 2: own processes at the factories and could sign off on
Speaker 2: them in some ways. And that really came to a
Speaker 2: halt last year with this blowout that we talked about,
Speaker 2: and where the FA really took a very hard look
Speaker 2: at its own role and its interaction with Boeing. Then
Speaker 2: put a lot more people on the ground at Boeing
Speaker 2: really slowed things down. So whether this will reverse this trend,
Speaker 2: and whether you know the trust that Boeing has rebuilt
Speaker 2: in the last couple of months, because Bowing was really coming,
Speaker 2: as I said, out of this very difficult year and
Speaker 2: was only now sort of gaining traction again. The production
Speaker 2: numbers were going up, the cash was building up again.
Speaker 2: The new CEO, Kelly Ordberg, he was seen as a
Speaker 2: steady hand. So if somehow this accident reveals and again
Speaker 2: this is pure speculation at this point, we don't know,
Speaker 2: and it's way too soon, but if somehow this were
Speaker 2: to reveal that something was wrong with a plane, that
Speaker 2: would obviously be a huge blow to Boeing.
Speaker 1: Right well, Ortberg, as you said, was supposed to be
Speaker 1: this steady hand new CEO that came into the position
Speaker 1: just last year. What has he done to address these concerns.
Speaker 2: Well, he's done a couple of things. One is sort
Speaker 2: of maybe these less visible sort of internal communication where
Speaker 2: he's told people it's fine to speak up if you
Speaker 2: see something that's not right in the company. There was
Speaker 2: a sense at Boeing that if you pointed out things
Speaker 2: that weren't running smoothly, you'd get penalized. So orbo came
Speaker 2: in and said, we need to slow things down, we
Speaker 2: need to get this right. I'd rather we build fewer
Speaker 2: planes or we build them properly. We need to rebuild
Speaker 2: the trust of the public, of the customers. There was
Speaker 2: a sense that Boeing was too fixated on its financial
Speaker 2: performance and not really so much as engineering performance. He's
Speaker 2: tried to sort of regain Boeing's engineering mantra. So all
Speaker 2: of these things he's done. Whether this will now get
Speaker 2: sabotaged by this accident, it's too soon to say. A
Speaker 2: lot of that will ride on what conclusions we can
Speaker 2: draw from the accident.
Speaker 1: Given this context, given the safety issues, the passenger concerns,
Speaker 1: and the company's recent efforts, could this crash mark a
Speaker 1: tipping point for the company.
Speaker 2: It might and you're seeing it to some degree in
Speaker 2: the stock performance today, which is obviously that the shares
Speaker 2: are hugely under pressure, and so are the shares of
Speaker 2: General Electric, which makes the engines for this aircraft. So
Speaker 2: if indeed it were to transpire that Boeing cut corners here,
Speaker 2: that there was something wrong with the aircraft, there was
Speaker 2: some sort of a failure, should we say, in the
Speaker 2: design or in the way the plane was put together,
Speaker 2: that would be a massive blow. But again we need
Speaker 2: to be extremely careful here not to jump to any conclusions,
Speaker 2: but this is obviously something that will be very much
Speaker 2: on Boeing's mind. On the other hand, this is one
Speaker 2: of two global aircraft manufacturers out there in the civil
Speaker 2: aviation space, the other one being a bus So a
Speaker 2: lot of people say, no matter what happens, Boeing's not
Speaker 2: going to disappear. Yes, they will maybe enter another crisis,
Speaker 2: but they will find their way out. They still make
Speaker 2: products that people need and that people want, and there
Speaker 2: isn't a third player out that. There are really only
Speaker 2: two games in town. So whatever crisis they enter, it
Speaker 2: might be threatening and it might be sort of all consuming,
Speaker 2: but it's unlikely that it'll undo.
Speaker 1: Boeing, and this speaks to this broader concern that I
Speaker 1: think passengers all over the world have been having that
Speaker 1: there have been more plane crashes recently. How is this
Speaker 1: all contributing to the sense that air travel is getting
Speaker 1: less safe? And is that feeling backed up in data
Speaker 1: and reality.
Speaker 2: Well, an absolute terms, air travel remains the safest mode
Speaker 2: of transport. I mean people in the industry will tell
Speaker 2: you it's probably less safe across the street or take
Speaker 2: a bus than it is to border plane. Now, having
Speaker 2: said that, if you look at an event like today,
Speaker 2: obviously people start worrying and start wandering. It's a highly
Speaker 2: regulated industry. Most of the aircraft out there are very
Speaker 2: well maintained. There are fierce checks and balances. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, we have had a string of accidents
Speaker 2: since the beginning of last year. We've spoken about the
Speaker 2: Boeing accident of that blowout, but there have been others.
Speaker 1: The helicopter crash in Washington Decerse, the.
Speaker 2: Helicopter crash in exactly that one, the mid air collision,
Speaker 2: and there have been others. The South Korean crash at
Speaker 2: the end of last year, there was a Delta plane
Speaker 2: that skidded off the runway and landed on its roof.
Speaker 2: Luckily no fatalities there, But all of that has sort
Speaker 2: of added to a sense that this is an industry
Speaker 2: coming out of an incredibly safe phase. So this is
Speaker 2: an industry that needs to face a new reality, which
Speaker 2: is yes, it's safe, but the public are having a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about that. You know, is it still
Speaker 2: safe to travel? Is not just a plane but also
Speaker 2: the people on the ground that are guiding the aircraft.
Speaker 2: Is that entire system that we've long taken for granted,
Speaker 2: is that still sort of trustworthy? That's a question that
Speaker 2: we are getting a lot more these days.
Speaker 1: Benedicte. I want to end on the human toll of
Speaker 1: this Air India crash that we're likely to see more
Speaker 1: clearly in the coming hours and the coming days. What
Speaker 1: kind of support have we seen today for the people
Speaker 1: who are most affected here, who are the victims and
Speaker 1: their families.
Speaker 2: So we know that in Gatwick, for instance, which is
Speaker 2: the app World in London, they've set up a helpline
Speaker 2: and local support staff and obviously this is hugely tragic
Speaker 2: for people who have lost their loved ones, and there's
Speaker 2: very little fundamentally that you can do that. You know,
Speaker 2: the best you can do is try and inform people
Speaker 2: as much as you can. But this is a fast
Speaker 2: moving and very chaotic situation. You have this wreckage in
Speaker 2: the middle of a densely populated city, so this will
Speaker 2: take time. But so far, what we've heard from the government,
Speaker 2: from the companies, from the regulators, from local authorities, from
Speaker 2: hospitals that everyone is rushing to this moment. I mean,
Speaker 2: part of the reason why this industry remains so safe
Speaker 2: is because conclusions are drawn from these accidents, as terrible
Speaker 2: as they are. But you know, authorities, investigators look at
Speaker 2: these accidents and they draw conclusions. They look at, Okay,
Speaker 2: what can we learn from them, What can we do differently?
Speaker 2: What kind of safety measures can we introduce that are
Speaker 2: a direct line from this accident to future developments. And
Speaker 2: that's why over time it's gotten much safer to travel byplane. Obviously,
Speaker 2: that's no real consolation for the families of the victims
Speaker 2: who are on this plane today.
Speaker 1: Benedic, thank you so much for joining us and giving
Speaker 1: us all that you know so far.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Follow the latest developments in the story on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
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