SEATTLE (CN) - Almost one year after losing their loved ones in a crash at the Muan International Airport in South Korea, 14 families are suing Boeing over claims that faulty manufacturing led to the fatal accident.
"Rather than admitting its fault in this tragic accident, Boeing resorts to its old, worn-out 'Blame the pilots' tactic," Charles Herrmann, attorney representing the families, said in a statement. "These pilots make easy targets; they perished in the flames with the passengers. They cannot defend themselves."
Last December, Jeju Air Flight 2216 was returning from Thailand to the Muan airport when it hit a flock of birds that triggered a "massive failure of nearly all of its antiquated electrical and hydraulic systems," the families write in the complaint.
According to the families, the system failures left the pilots without a way to land the aircraft safely. Upon touchdown, the plane slid past the runway and crashed into a concrete ridge, bursting into flames. Only two of the 181 people on board survived the crash.
The families accuse Boeing of failing to modernize its core electrical equipment and prioritizing profit over the safety of passengers. The families say the technology in the aircraft involved in the fatal crash was 57 years old at the time of the accident, and the company hadn't made any fundamental upgrades to 737s in that time.
DNA tests confirmed the birds that struck the plane were Baikal teals, a type of duck prevalent on freshwater lakes near the airport that weigh around one pound each. Federal aviation regulations require that plane engines must be able to withstand ingestion of up to four one-pound birds without thrust falling below 75%.
When the birds struck the plane, the pilots shut off the left engine, and the right engine lost nearly half of its thrust.
"These engines were likely defective," the families write.
The families say the strike led to a cascade of system failures that made it impossible for the pilots to touch down safely despite their best efforts.
"By the time the aircraft had completed the go-around and was approaching the runway a second time, nearly all of the systems designed to assist the pilots in safely landing the aircraft failed," the families write.
The landing gear, which provides aerodynamic drag while airborne and on-ground resistance through wheel brakes, failed to deploy.
"Although these seasoned pilots managed to fly the aircraft back to the runway, the failure of all these systems combined to deny them the means to land safely," Herrmann said.
The families accuse Boeing of negligently manufacturing a defective aircraft.
"Bereaved families deserve the truth," Herrmann said. "Met with evasion in Korea, these plaintiffs seek justice in U.S. courts where we can legally compel them to reveal the truth."
The complaint was filed on Tuesday in King County Superior Court in Washington. Boeing was originally headquartered in Seattle, though it later relocated to Chicago and, more recently, Arlington, Virginia. The company retains a large production facility in Renton, Washington, where the plane involved in the crash was manufactured.
Boeing did not provide a comment before press time.
Source: Courthouse News Service
