FlyersRights, as the designated representative of the flying public to the FAA on safety, has been working hard to ensure the Boeing 737 MAX is not ungrounded unless it is safe. 

Toward that end we questioned Boeing on why it did NOT ground after the first crash in 2018, then publicly called for grounding shortly after the second crash in 2019 due to the same defective software. Link.

In November 2019, FlyersRights.org issued a white paper explaining in detail the broken FAA aircraft certification process that delegates safety decisions to Boeing with little oversight. 

In December 2019, Flyers Rights filed a Freedom of Information court case to require FAA disclosure of the technical details of the Boeing proposed MAX fix to unground the plane. This would enable independent experts to evaluate MAX safety fixes instead of just taking the word of discredited and conflicted Boeing employees and undertrained FAA personnel.

The court ordered in 2020 the FAA release the documents amounting to about 10,000 pages, but Boeing and FAA, while promising transparency, redacted all substantive documents plus all details of FAA testing. The FAA and Boeing claim trade secrets, agency confidentiality and personal privacy to maintain their longstanding tradition of secrecy and unaccountability in aircraft safety certification.

So now we must persuade the court to override Boeing and FAA secrecy. And if the FAA ungrounds the MAX based on secret data, we expect to appeal to that decision.

Appeal courts have ruled that the FAA cannot make important safety decisions based on secret data.

FlyersRights’ Litigation has the support of the Flight Attendants union, top Aviation safety engineers and pilots – but for our legal team and experts to be successful we need passenger donations as never before. 

Such safety litigation does not produce a monetary return even if successful. The FAA and Boeing have enormous resources. 

But with your help now in raising at least $50,000, FlyersRights can be successful in preventing an unsafe ungrounding of the 737 MAX.

The MAX caused 346 deaths in two 100% fatal crashes In 2018 and 2019. It was projected by FAA technical personnel to result in an additional 15 such crashes over the life of the aircraft based on its defective design and software.

Paul Hudson

President, FlyersRights