Aviation

Despite assurances from Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg that fixes to the Max aircraft will make the planes “even safer,” on April 15, 2019, United Airlines announced that it will be grounding its Max8 fleet through mid July. Boeing’s top executive apologized last week for two recent crashes of the Max8 aircraft and admitted that a software update would prevent further disasters, according to ABC Network News. The announcement by United Airlines comes on the heels…

The Ethiopian government released earlier this week its preliminary report to the public for the March 10, 2019 accident involving Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. The report included plots of the Flight Data Recorder data and a detailed time history of events including those derived from the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). Review of these data show the MCAS automatic stabilizer trim activations occurred between 250 and 340 knots indicated airspeed (KIAS), which is on the upper…

PRESS CONFERENCE THURSDAY, 11/4/2019 AT 11 A.M. CST IN CHICAGO Clifford Law Offices of Chicago and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy of San Francisco, internationally recognized aviation firms, filed a lawsuit on Thursday, April 4, 2019 on behalf of the family of a 24-year-old woman and U.S. citizen who was killed in the tragic crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max8 aircraft March 10. The detailed complaint was filed in federal district court in Chicago against Boeing, manufacturer of the…

Aeromexico Airlines told a federal judge on Wednesday, March 27, 2019 that it would not contest liability in the tragic incident involving 103 on board July 31 when a plane took off in heavy rain in Durango, Mexico, then crashed moments after takeoff near the runway before catching fire. Thankfully all passengers and crew survived. Clifford Law Offices represents a number of the passengers aboard, including a group from the Chicago area. Litigation is pending…

Robert A. Clifford, one of the nation’s top aviation attorneys, wrote a letter yesterday to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) head offering 10 suggestions he could do to improve the workings of the agency in light of the two recent Boeing Max8 planes. With a focus on safety, Clifford wrote FAA Acting Administrator Daniel K. Elwell of short and long-term priorities that may help restore the public’s confidence in flying, particularly as a new head…

As a new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief is about to take the controls with a distinguished aviation education, airline career and “culture of safety” record behind him, it causes one to pause and think just what should the immediate and longer-term safety priorities of the agency be. After many decades of representing airplane accident victims and their families, as well as working closely with our accident investigation and safety engineering experts, the following initial…

The Boeing and FAA sins in the 737 MAX design and certification program continue to grow in number, severity, and consequence. This may now include criminal charges, as the US DOJ and DOT Inspector General begin investigations with a grand jury, preservation requests and plenty of media hysteria. This is not the first time that a new Boeing airplane program has had incidents caused by poor system safety design and certification, with Boeing and FAA…

American Eagle Flight 4184’s crash in a rainy soybean field in Roselawn, Indiana, on Halloween night, Oct. 31, 1994, was the culmination of years of ATR turboprop airplane icing incidents and deadly crashes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into Flight 4184 and all the prior ATR icing incidents and crashes revealed an airplane manufacturer determined to outsell the competition via numerous aggressive design and marketing efforts, including a highly-leveraged, marginally stable lateral control…

Amidst the media reports accompanying the worldwide grounding of the 737 MAX, concluding with the reluctant Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounding, were mentions that the investigative team on the ground in Ethiopia had found “airplane configuration evidence” similar to the Lion Air Flight 610 accident. This evidence, along with the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADSB) altitude data, were strong enough evidence to indicate the likelihood that the 737 MAX’s new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS)…