The Boeing 737 Max: When Cost Cutting Threatens Passengers’ Lives

Boeing 737 Max: Deadly Assumptions

DW (2020)

Film Review

This documentary concerns worrying shortcuts Boeing took in its development of the 737 Max, resulting in two fatal crashes (and 346 death) in 2018 and 2019. Filmmakers obtained their information from Boeing whistleblowers and from a lawsuit victims’ family filed against the manufacturer. The film also raises troubling questions about the failure of the FAA to adequately enforce safety regulations.

The first Max crashed in Indonesia in October 2018. On investigation, the FAA, identified a potential for the plane’s MCAS software system to malfunction. Statistically  engineers predicted the faulty MCAS could cause one plane crash every three years. Victims of the second, Ethiopia Airlines, crash assert that either Boeing or the FAA should have grounded the 737 Max at this point. However, for some inexplicable reason, both deemed the risk to be acceptable.

According to lawyers for the victims, Boeing began work on the Max in 2011 to compete with the Eurobus Neo. Launched n December 2010, enhanced fuel efficiency made the latter far cheaper to operate than anything Boeing had to offer. Instead of designing a totally new aircraft, to save costs Boeing simply mounted the engines higher on their 50-year-old 737 model. To compensate for the difficulty in manoeuvrability this caused, the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation Software System (MCAS).

The MCAS, in turn,  had an unfortunate tendency to increase the plane’s downward thrust without the pilot’s knowledge The second crash led both the EU and China to immediately ground their Max jets, with the FAA following suit a day later. Although Boeing had warned pilots about potential problems with the MCAS after the first crash, the Ethiopian Airlines pilot was unable to compensate for the downward thrust effect of the MCAS. Again owing to cost concerns, Boeing had resisted offering pilots simulator training on the faulty planes.

Boeing whistleblowers informed filmmakers about other Boeing cost cutting measures that pose potential risks to passenger safety. Examples include 800 airplanes with damaged bolts (caused by using the wrong tool to tighten them), metal slivers in the wiring (that could cause shorts by damaging the insulation) and oxygen masks (on the 787) that fail to deploy 25% of the time.

According to the New York Times, the FAA and Canadian and Brazilian regulators lifted their grounding ban on the Max in  December 2020. The families of those killed aboard the two fatal flights argue the Max is still unfit to fly. For now, American and other airlines allow “anxious” passengers to rebook flights if they wish to avoid the troubled aircraft.

Anatomy of Modern Corruption: The Clinton Foundation and the Superdelegates

What Hillary Clinton Really Represents

Empire Files (2016)

Film Review

This early 2016 documentary is a virtual encyclopedia of Clinton family corruption. Based entirely on publicly verifiable information, it reveals how Hillary, especially, has based her political career on supporting legislation that specifically benefits her corporate and foreign donors. It also explores the identity of some of the 700 Democratic “superdelegates” who helped deny Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination – despite overwhelming support he received from voters.

The Clinton Foundation was founded in 1997 with the alleged purpose of providing humanitarian relief after international disasters. Its real purpose, however, was to engage in “crisis capitalism,” a term coined by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Following a disasters, such as the 2001 earthquake in India, the Clinton Foundation would waltz in and create a variety of for-profit projects enabling further exploitation of third world resources and labor by Clinton Foundation donors.

Major donors to the Clinton foundation included Exxon, Walmart, Pfizer, Dow, Monsanto, General Electric (GE), Fox News, the Soros Foundation, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As senator, Clinton rewarded the latter two donors by supporting deregulation that would lead to their bankruptcy in 2008 and a massive taxpayer bailout.

As Secretary of State, Clinton would grant similar favors to Boeing and GE by facilitating overseas sales of their military hardware and to Exxon by heavily promoting the spread of fracking throughout the world.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Republic and Qatar were also big donors to the Clinton Foundation. In all 181 Clinton Foundation donors lobbied Clinton as Secretary of State and most were successful in getting the policies they advocated enacted.

Many of the 700 superdelegates appointed by the Democratic National Committee (to help ensure their hand picked candidates won the Democratic primary) were also corporate lobbyists hoping to benefit financially from a Clinton presidency: among others, the corporate lobbies represented included the Excel pipeline, the private prison industry, Big Pharma and the four main Wall Street banks (City Group, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase).