Washington (AFP)
Texas-based Southwest Airlines pilots announced Monday that they have filed a lawsuit against US automaker Boeing accusing it of "deliberately misleading" about the 737 MAX, a model grounded after two deadly crashes.
"We need to trust Boeing to sincerely disclose the information necessary to operate our aircraft safely," said Captain Jonathan Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA).
But "in the case of the 737 MAX, that was absolutely not the case", according to him.
The complaint, filed in Dallas (Texas, southern United States), alleges that Boeing falsely claimed that the aircraft was airworthy.
Nearly 350 people were killed in crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia in March 2019. In both cases, pilots experienced difficulties in controlling the aircraft after the activation of the anti-theft management system. - MCAS stall, according to preliminary investigations.
The immobilization of the 737 MAX since March has canceled more than 30,000 planned Southwest flights and caused a shortfall of more than $ 100 million for its pilots, according to SWAPA.
This company is the one that used the most of these devices, which could only resume passenger transport in 2020.
© 2019 AFP