AP Exclusive: Ethiopian Airlines’ former chief engineer says in whistleblower complaint filed with regulators that the company has a history of shoddy repairs and fabricated documents and can't be trusted to tell the truth about its Max jet that crashed.
In this photo taken Monday, Sept. 23, 2019, Yonas Yeshanew, who resigned as Ethiopian Airline's chief engineer this summer and is seeking asylum in the U.S., listens to a reporter's question during an interview in Seattle area.
Yeshanew’s criticism of Ethiopian’s maintenance practices, backed by three other former employees who spoke to AP, makes him the latest voice urging investigators to take a closer look at potential human factors in the Max saga and not just focus on Boeing’s faulty anti-stall system, which has been blamed in two crashes in four months.
And he produced an FAA audit from three years ago that found, among dozens of other problems, that nearly all of the 82 mechanics, inspectors and supervisors whose files were reviewed lacked the minimum requirements for doing their jobs. Yeshanew said he didn’t know what was in the records previously or if they were changed, only that the records were left to say that tests had been done and the issue had been resolved. While he doubted that the flight-control problem brought the plane down, he said any changes to the records would call into question the actual condition of the airplane at the time of the crash as well as the integrity of the airline as a whole.
Ethiopian is Africa’s biggest airline, is profitable and is one of only a few on the continent that have passed the tests necessary to allow their planes to fly into Europe and North America, with a relatively good safety record. Yeshanew also attached internal emails to the report that he contends show faulty paperwork and repairs, and investigations from parts suppliers that point to similar errors, including ones that led to two cockpit windows shattering in flight, a de-icing mechanism burning, and missing or incorrect bolts on key sensors.
“They would actually lie about it,” said Franz Rasmussen, who flew for the airline for two years before leaving in 2016. “There was a philosophy: You can’t ground an airplane — it’s go, go, go.” Four days later, Yeshanew fled to the U.S. with this wife and two children and settled in the Seattle area.
“It was all about ensuring the positive image of the company and the country is kept intact,” said HRW researcher Felix Horne. “Many people who tried to speak out against government-controlled companies were inevitably thrown in prison and beaten up.”
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