The spokesman of Allied Pilots Association representing American Airlines, Dennis Tajer termed Boeing’s remark that pilots were to blame for the two recent 737 Max 8 mishaps involving Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines as ‘inexcusable’ and also made it clear to the media that AA pilots made several suggestions to the plane-maker to fix the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) problem of Boeing’s Max 8 planes before the second crash.
The spokesman of Allied Pilots Association pointed out Thursday that Boeing has unfairly pointed the finger of blame at the pilots and says “Shame on you, we are going to call you out on it” referring to Boeing just before a scheduled Federal Aviation Administration meeting in Fort Worth, Texas that is to come in a few days from now.
In the last few weeks Boeing’s management including its CEO Dennis Muilenburg have held the airline pilots responsible for the crashes, Muilenburg said in April that the pilots of both the crashes didn’t ‘completely’ follow proper procedures outlined by Boeing to prevent the malfunction and that there was no problem in the design of the Max 8 planes. Ethiopian Airlines officials don’t agree with Muilenburg’s statement and according to them the crash happened in spite of pilots following all safety procedures outlined by Boeing.
Tajer also told CNN that AA pilots made several suggestions to fix the malfunction associated with the MCAS system of the Max 8 planes way back in November 2018 during a meeting with Boeing soon after the first of the two crashes occurred, Tajer feels that the second crash involving Ethiopian Airlines could have been avoided if Boeing had taken action on the Pilots’ suggestions.
Dennis Tajer representing the AA pilots union being a pilot himself has flown the currently grounded Max 8 model several times and argues that there was no mistake at the pilots end, he reiterates that Ethiopian Airline pilots did what they were supposed to do by following all procedures as outlined by Boeing but the mishap couldn’t be avoided because of the MCAS technical problem.
