In 2022, Rory Kennedy exposed the aviation safety scandal at the heart of Boeing in Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. Since then, even more Boeing whistleblowers have come forward. Now Kennedy revisits the case in Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, streaming on Netflix.
How far will large corporations go to line the pockets of their shareholders and their senior management teams? Treat their staff like cattle? Mine every last dollar no matter the risks? How about assembling aircraft and selling them to airlines that carry millions of people, knowing they are poorly made and riddled with problems? In 2022, Rory Kennedy exposed the aviation safety scandal at the heart of Boeing in Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. Yet, since that documentary, even more Boeing whistleblowers have come forward, and nobody has paid the price for years of cover-ups and the hundreds of deaths involving Boeing 737 Max planes, from Lion Air Flight 610 to Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.
In the aftermath of both accidents involving the Boeing 737 Max, the families of all 346 people killed have been treated with contempt by both Boeing and an American political system that prefers protection over challenge. But this isn’t an issue surrounding only one of Boeing’s aircraft, as Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing makes clear. The 787 Dreamliner and some 777s also suffered from poor construction, cost-cutting, and ill-fitting outsourced components. While we still do not know the cause of the 787 Air India tragedy, questions remain about Boeing’s claim that the 787 was the safest passenger aircraft in the world, which are only exacerbated by the sight of poorly trained staff taking a sledgehammer to critical fixing pins in Rory Kennedy’s horrifying exposé.
Of course, from Boeing’s perspective, accidents and incidents involving passenger planes affect all manufacturers, from Airbus to Bombardier. In response to Kennedy’s follow-up documentary, they state that some of the claims against the company remain unfounded and that, under a new CEO, the company continues to address its workplace culture and has made significant progress. Yet the fact that no one has faced justice and that criminal proceedings have been dropped suggests that, for Boeing, it’s business as usual. How many aircraft were produced and sold from 2015 to now with defects, and how many of those defects are just waiting to surface as the stress and strain on planes increase over time?
An answer could well lie in the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 incident, where on January 5, 2024, a door plug on a Boeing 737 Max detached mid-air, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft. But it wasn’t just the door plugs that failed; deployed oxygen masks also failed to deliver the required oxygen levels due to flaws in the manufacturing process, as whistleblower John Barnett had warned years earlier. Barnett not only found his safety and maintenance concerns ignored in the company he had dedicated his life to, but also found himself actively isolated, bullied, and harassed by a company that prioritised profit and silence over the precision engineering and teamwork Boeing was once famous for. Barnett would tragically take his own life in March 2024 after years of battling a corporate giant protected by politicians.
That brings me back to the question I posed at the beginning of this article: How far will large corporations go to line the pockets of their shareholders and their senior management teams? In the case of Boeing, it’s clear that there are no lengths it won’t go to, even when its reputation is in tatters. But it’s also clear that blame lies outside the company walls, in political environments that fail to challenge and instead accept and embrace the mantra of money over people. Will Boeing ever face justice for the lies, failures, bad practices, and deaths of 346 innocent people?
The truth is deeply uncomfortable. Corporate leaders and those who have siphoned money from a once-proud American business remain unlikely to face criminal proceedings, despite efforts by relatives and whistleblowers, because of their political protection. The people who will, and have, paid the price are the passengers who have died at the hands of Boeing’s actions and inactions, and the bullied and threatened whistleblowers who dared to call the company out. Companies like Boeing are viewed by American politicians as “too big to fail,” allowing them to circumvent justice, yet, as one ex-Boeing employee puts it, “until you hold people accountable, they will not change.” I can only hope American politicians and those entrusted with safeguarding the airline industry are listening.
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing is now streaming on Netflix.
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