The airline industry’s top lobbyist denounced what he called the US Justice Department’s criminalization of air accidents, saying such moves risk undercutting a culture of whistleblowing and open reporting of defects.
The decision to look with “a criminal focus” at Boeing Co.’s conduct around the blowout of a door plug on a 737 Max 9 was taken too soon after the January accident, said Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association.
“I think it’s completely wrong,” Walsh said in an interview with Bloomberg in Hong Kong on Tuesday. He said that such moves aren’t in the interest of safety, the traveling public or the industry at large.
Air-safety regulators have worked for years with airlines, pilots and planemakers to encourage openness in investigating aircraft accidents. The use of self-reporting tools to spot and address errors has helped to drive down the number of accidents and deaths from air travel.
The probe “risks pushing people back into a period when we didn’t have as open a culture in terms of reporting,” the IATA head said. “To me, it’s a retrograde step, something that we have to push back and push back strongly against.”
The Justice Department has convened a grand jury as part of its ongoing criminal investigation into the Jan. 5 mid-air accident involving the near-new 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines, Bloomberg News reported on Monday…
