MY DAUGHTER DIED IN A BOEING 737 MAX CRASH. IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN
When Catherine Bethert discovered that her 28-year-old daughter had been killed in a fatal plane crash, she “sort of blacked out”, before plunging into a deep state of denial that lasted for months.
Camille Bethert-Geoffroy, a human rights advocate working in Africa’s refugee camps, was flying from Ethiopia to Kenya on 10 March 2019 when the Boeing 737 Max 8 she was travelling on crashed six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board.
Ms Bethert-Geoffroy’s mother learnt of the accident when she woke up to a barrage of text messages and notifications on her phone. “I remember watching the images of the plane crash on the telly and I sort of blacked out,” she tells i.
After a string of recent in-flight incidents on Boeing aircraft, Ms Bethert says she believes 737 Max aeroplanes are dangerous and claims a crash like the one that killed her child “could happen again”.
The Frenchwoman was used to seeing her daughter leave for humanitarian missions in the Central African Republic and South Sudan for about four months and then return to her native Paris for a few days.
Ms Bethert-Geoffroy had previously taken short flights from one African location to another and even crossed the Nile in Egypt in far more dangerous circumstances, her mother said.
So when she heard her daughter had died in the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash – along with victims of 35 nationalities, including nine from the UK – she could not comprehend it. Ms Bethert spent months in denial, and says she lost 20 kilos in a year.
“I have no recollection of anything. I knew right away that my daughter was dead, but I didn’t open a newspaper until early July,” she says.
The crash, along with another fatal Boeing 737 Max 8 crash in Indonesia just months earlier, claimed a total of 346 lives, leading to a global 20-month grounding of the plane and an inquiry into the aircraft’s passenger service approval process. Boeing faced allegations of fraud for withholding information from safety inspectors and eventually agreed to pay more than $2.5bn in January 2021.
The settlement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) included a $243.6m criminal fine, $1.77bn in airline customer damages, and a $500m fund for crash victims in exchange for immunity from prosecution for three years. The Boeing 737 Max airliner was back in the air that same year.
However, Ms Bethert and other victims’ families objected to the plea deal. They claimed the DOJ “lied and violated their rights through a secret process” and asked a Texas district court judge in charge of the case to rescind Boeing’s immunity from criminal prosecution.
The judge eventually ruled that the relatives should be recognised as “crime victims”, emboldening them to pursue their case and ask the DOJ to lift Boeing’s immunity.
Boeing’s immunity from prosecution expired this January, after which Ms Bethert says the DOJ offered to hear her and the other relatives’ case on 24 April. They want to reopen the criminal case and stop Boeing 737 Max aeroplanes from taking off until they comply with international safety regulations.
“We’ve been warning everyone for years that this plane is dangerous – it’s not normal. We’re warning that there’s going to be a third crash,” she said.
The aviation company has recently come under scrutiny again after a series of safety episodes involving Boeing aircraft.
Its planes have experienced at least nine technical incidents already this year. These include a Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s sudden mid-air nosedive between Australia and New Zealand, which left at least 50 passengers injured, and the door plug of a commercial Boeing 737 Max 9 tearing off as the aircraft was climbing, leaving a gaping hole on the side of the plane.
The latter incident involving an Alaska Airlines plane became the subject of a new criminal investigation launched by the DOJ this month. Board chairman Larry Kellner and CEO Dave Calhoun both announced their resignation from their positions shortly afterwards.
“It’s been five years since the crash, and in fact, from a legal point of view, if nothing happens, Boeing’s executives and board will walk away with the blood and death of 346 people on their hands – and it could happen again,” Ms Bethert said.
The DOJ is expected to make a decision on Boeing’s fate on the deadline of 7 July and has three options: dismiss the criminal charges against the company, extend the company’s immunity, or reopen the criminal case and prosecute the company and the executives involved in the crime that led to the 346 deaths.
“We consider that those responsible are not only Boeing but also the American Department of Justice because they made a deal knowing that the rights of the victims were not respected and that they did not look further into the case,” Ms Bethert said.
“We are convinced that the deal is illegal.”
Boeing told i in a statement: “We will never forget the lives lost on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610 and their loved ones. Their memory and the hard lessons we learned from these accidents drive us every day to uphold our responsibility to all who depend on the safety and quality of our products.”
The company’s commercial airplanes CEO, Stan Deal, said earlier this month that US Federal Aviation Administration inspectors had audited production and quality control at Boeing’s Washington state manufacturing facilities in January and February.
” The vast majority of our audit non-compliances involved not following our approved processes and procedures,” he said. “In addition to the steps we have taken to enhance quality, such as adding layers of inspections, our team has taken prompt action to ensure understanding and compliance with our requirements.”
He said these included working with employees to ensure they fully understood instructions, implementing weekly compliance checks for work on 737s, and removing non-compliant toolboxes.
Mr Deal said Boeing would soon deliver a comprehensive plan to the FAA to strengthen safety and quality.
i has also contacted the US Department of Justice for comment.
2024-03-27T13:30:45Z dg43tfdfdgfd