By Chris Hamby Jan. 21, 2020
After a Boeing 737 crashed near Amsterdam more than a decade ago, an expert study that sharply criticized the manufacturer was never published by the Dutch safety authorities, and its key findings were either excluded or played down in their accident report.
On Tuesday, the Dutch Safety Board, which had commissioned the study, reversed course — publishing it a day after The New York Times detailed the findings.
The Times’s review of evidence from the accident, which killed nine people on a Turkish Airlines flight in 2009, showed the study’s conclusions were relevant to investigations into two more recent crashes of Boeing aircraft that killed 346.
[Read The Times’s investigation here.]
The study, by Sidney Dekker, acknowledged that the pilots made serious errors but also found that Boeing bore significant responsibility. It accused the company of trying to deflect attention from its own “design shortcomings” with “hardly credible” statements drawing attention to the pilots’ mistakes.
A spokeswoman for the board had told The Times last week that Dr. Dekker’s study was confidential. But in a statement on Tuesday, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chairman of the Dutch board, said the study had been posted online because the board’s “current practices” had changed. “We now publish as much as possible,” he said.
The board also defended its investigation of the 2009 crash, which involved a 737 Next Generation, or NG, a predecessor to the 737 Max. The more recent accidents involved the Max, which has been grounded since last year as investigations continue.
Mr. Dijsselbloem noted “the key question” for those investigations was whether lessons from 2009 “were sufficiently learned by Boeing and the American authorities.”
Multiple aviation experts who had read Dr. Dekker’s study told The Times its findings had not been sufficiently incorporated into the final Dutch accident report. In addition, the Times learned, the Dutch removed or minimized criticisms of Boeing after pushback from a team of Americans that included the manufacturer and federal safety officials.
Jan Paternotte, a member of the Dutch House of Representatives, praised the study’s release but called for a hearing of those involved, saying he believed he would secure the necessary support during a committee meeting on Wednesday. “Boeing has been capable of strong-arming outside parties if it serves the short-term interest of the company,” he said. “When safety is at stake, that is a problem.”
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