Aviation lawyers said Sunday that Boeing has taken a lot of “self-inflicted pain” over the past few months with a series of recent accidents, but some say the blame lies with the airline itself.
Fox News has tracked at least four crashes involving Boeing planes in January, two in February, and up to 10 as of mid-March.
Former pilot Arthur Rosenberg highlighted an incident earlier this month when a tire came off a United Airlines passenger plane as it took off from San Francisco International Airport.
Video of the incident showed a Boeing 777-200’s tires coming off during takeoff and landing in the airport employee parking lot, damaging several cars.
“It’s not really a Boeing issue. That’s an old airplane,” Rosenberg said on “Fox News Live.” “The tires are changed and the United maintenance guys and mechanics also change the tires. Something went wrong. I think it was a recent tire change or repair that caused it to come off. . It’s not really Boeing’s problem.”
The second United Airlines plane that landed in Medford, Oregon, on Friday was missing an exterior panel. The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 139 passengers and six crew members.
Rosenberg said the photos of the missing panels do not indicate “a problem with Boeing.” “To me, it looks like a maintenance issue with United Airlines,” he explained.
But aerospace engineers said the door plug that blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet during a flight in January was a manufacturing defect. “There is absolutely no excuse for that,” he added.
“It was a failure of Boeing’s internal policies and procedures. And apparently, if you look at the long history leading up to it and after, it was endemic within Boeing, in my opinion, and it became a pandemic. It seems there is.”
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced in its preliminary investigation report that four door plug key bolts were missing and have not been recovered.
An investigative hearing regarding the incident is scheduled to be held in early August.
Rosenberg said he believes the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is understaffed and overworked, with a dual policy of safety as well as economy.
“They don’t want to put airlines out of business. They don’t want to put them out of business with protocols and safety procedures. But they are watchdogs. And in my view, they don’t want to put airlines out of business, which is the primary objective of aircraft safety. It’s not fulfilling its purpose,” the aviation expert explained.
He added that the flying public can trust that air travel is safe.
“The FAA will do it right, and I hope Boeing will do it right. And only time will tell,” he said.
