An estimated 400 pilots have filed a class-action lawsuit against Boeing. The pilots are reportedly accusing the US aviation giant of covering up faulty sensor issue and keeping pilots in the dark about the feature in the pursuit of quick returns.
The lawsuit will be heard by a Chicago court in October, according to reports by multiple news platforms.
The legal action was started by a pilot, identified only as ‘Pilot X’ in court documents, which were seen by the Australian Broadcasting Company.
He was joined by over 400 fellow pilots, trained to fly the fourth-generation narrow-body 737 MAX aircraft. They accuse the Chicago-based aviation corporation of hushing known concerns about the glitch-ridden equipment installed on the jets.
The main problem with the jets is rooted in the “inherently dangerous aerodynamic handling defects” of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), designed to prevent the plane from stalling. Its smooth operation depends on data it receives from two Angle of Attack (AoA) alert sensors. There are two of them for a reason: if the data from the sensors does not match, then a AoA Disagree alert should light up, notifying the pilots of the discrepancy.
For the latter to work properly, an optional set of indicators needs to be installed on the plane, and only 20 percent of the 737 MAX jets had them. Boeing recently admitted that it knew of the problem since at least 2017, but did not notify the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) until after the Lion Air flight with 189 people on board crashed in Indonesia last October. Moreover, it did not plan to update the software until 2020.
