The Chief Executive Officer of the American aircraft maker Boeing has admitted that the software that was installed on the Boeing 737 max most probably caused the two recent fatal accidents, one in Indonesia and the most lost recent one in Ethiopia in March.
Muilenburg posted on Twitter saying: “We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 accidents and are relentlessly focussed on the safety to ensure that this never happens again.”
Muilenburg’s apology came shortly after the government of Ethiopia released preliminary findings of an investigation in which they found that the pilots has implemented all the instructions that the aircraft maker had provided but failed to bring the aircraft into control.
The findings, released Thursday by the Ethiopian transport minister Dagmawit Moges, shows that the pilots on the Ethiopian Airlines flight initially followed the prescribed procedures after the anti-stall system malfunctioned. They shut off the electricity that allows the automated software to push the plane’s nose down and took manual control of the jet. They then tried to right the plane, with the captain telling his co-pilot three times to “pull up.”
But the pilots could not regain control of the aircraft. The aircraft continued its nosedive and in four minutes it had crashed killing all 157 people on board.
The findings are a huge indictment for the American aircraft maker. Already the Ethiopian government has revealed it plans to press for damages from boing. But this will only be a fraction of the anticipated suits for damages the company is likely to suffer from relatives of the more than 300 people that perished in both accidents.
