The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) issued a statement on September 21, 2021, in response to Boeing’s decision to eliminate customer Flight Training Airplane pilots and sending those jobs to overseas contract house. Its statement read:
“On Friday September 18, The Boeing Company delivered layoff notices to its remaining seven Flight Training Airplane (FTA) pilots and will instead send the critical work of providing on-site training to airline customers to an overseas contract house. The 60-day notices of layoff eliminate all direct Boeing FTA pilots by the end of November – a critical moment in Boeing’s plan to return the 737MAX to service and start delivering the roughly 400 airplanes now parked around the West Coast.
“The move comes just days after the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure released its report on the “Design, Development and Certification of the Boeing 737MAX.” Based on a year-long investigation, the report, along with citing a “culture of concealment” in Boeing management, calls on the company to provide additional training specific to the 737MAX upgrades to every airline pilot flying the plane after it returns to service.”
Robert A. Clifford, Lead Counsel of the pending litigation for the families who lost loved ones in the crash of a Boeing 737MAX jet in Ethiopia on March 10, 2019, found the Boeing outsourcing move to be one that continued to demonstrate profit over safety at the corporation. The litigation surrounds the second crash within five months of a Boeing 737MAX that claimed the lives of 346 people in the two crashes.
“Boeing’s reported outsourcing its training on the 737 Max8 to pilots whose training is unknown is a problem for a company that has not learned anything following two crashes that took the lives of 346 people. It is a tragedy for the flying public that Boeing still prioritizes profit and financial performance over safety and engineering performance. Boeing must understand that safety must be it’s top priority no matter the cost because lives are at stake,” Clifford said.
Clifford Law Offices of Chicago represents 68 families in the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. The litigation is pending in federal district court in Chicago.