Expat pilot turns self-styled whistle-blower after 737 Max crash
When he heard about the crash, Ethiopian Airlines captain Bernd Kai von Hoesslin said he felt a wave of anger, then nausea. It was March 10 when the Ethiopian 737 Max 8 went down and von Hoesslin was in a West Africa hotel between flights. He said he called his crew into a private corner of a restaurant and warned them there would be no survivors. But the pilot also felt a sense of responsibility. For months, he said, he had been pleading with fellow pilots and managers to do more to understand potential risks of a new 737 Max flight control feature that malfunctioned in one of the Boeing Co. jetliners that had gone down months earlier off the coast of Indonesia. “When I saw it was a Max, already I’m just thinking ‘Jesus,’” von Hoesslin said in his first interview since leaving the airline and Ethiopia after the crash. Even in those early hours, he said, he feared it had been triggered by the same automated flight control feature involved in the earlier Indonesian crash. “Of course I was mad, too," von Hoesslin recalled of his crew briefing. The Canadian citizen born of German parents spoke at length in a series of interviews at his lawyer Darryl Levitt’s suburban Toronto office and over the phone. He spoke about the accident, what he called his attempts to conduct his own investigation and his experiences at the airline. He also shared hundreds of pages of emails, video recordings and other documents he says reflect safety concerns he raised with the airline and others. Ethiopian Airlines hasn’t disputed the authenticity of the emails but calls von Hoesslin’s allegations “false and factually incorrect." The airline did notify its pilots after Boeing, in the wake of the prior crash of an Indonesian-based Lion Air jet, issued a safety bulletin about the malfunctioning flight control system. It says it strictly complies with all global safety standards and regulatory requirements and was one of the first airlines in the world to purchase a 737 Max flight simulator for training. In a July 26 email, Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw called von Hoesslin “a disgruntled ex employee pilot who is fabricating all kinds of false allegations against his former employer to mislead the public at large.”<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2019-08-15/star/expat-pilot-turns-self-styled-whistle-blower-after-737-max-crash
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Expat pilot turns self-styled whistle-blower after 737 Max crash
When he heard about the crash, Ethiopian Airlines captain Bernd Kai von Hoesslin said he felt a wave of anger, then nausea. It was March 10 when the Ethiopian 737 Max 8 went down and von Hoesslin was in a West Africa hotel between flights. He said he called his crew into a private corner of a restaurant and warned them there would be no survivors. But the pilot also felt a sense of responsibility. For months, he said, he had been pleading with fellow pilots and managers to do more to understand potential risks of a new 737 Max flight control feature that malfunctioned in one of the Boeing Co. jetliners that had gone down months earlier off the coast of Indonesia. “When I saw it was a Max, already I’m just thinking ‘Jesus,’” von Hoesslin said in his first interview since leaving the airline and Ethiopia after the crash. Even in those early hours, he said, he feared it had been triggered by the same automated flight control feature involved in the earlier Indonesian crash. “Of course I was mad, too," von Hoesslin recalled of his crew briefing. The Canadian citizen born of German parents spoke at length in a series of interviews at his lawyer Darryl Levitt’s suburban Toronto office and over the phone. He spoke about the accident, what he called his attempts to conduct his own investigation and his experiences at the airline. He also shared hundreds of pages of emails, video recordings and other documents he says reflect safety concerns he raised with the airline and others. Ethiopian Airlines hasn’t disputed the authenticity of the emails but calls von Hoesslin’s allegations “false and factually incorrect." The airline did notify its pilots after Boeing, in the wake of the prior crash of an Indonesian-based Lion Air jet, issued a safety bulletin about the malfunctioning flight control system. It says it strictly complies with all global safety standards and regulatory requirements and was one of the first airlines in the world to purchase a 737 Max flight simulator for training. In a July 26 email, Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw called von Hoesslin “a disgruntled ex employee pilot who is fabricating all kinds of false allegations against his former employer to mislead the public at large.”<br/>
