Boeing and FAA put the US Freedom of Information Act in Danger – eTurboNews | eTN

Paul Huson, the founder and head of Flyers Rights, a US consumer rights movement for the aviation industry, had been instrumental in fighting Boeing and the US Government in telling the truth, releasing secret documents, and going to court.

eTurboNews reported about this lawsuit in March since experts could not determine if the Boeing 737 MAX, whose original certification is alleged by the DOJ to be a product of a criminal conspiracy, and is safe to fly.

Flyers Rights want FAA and Boeing to be transparent, and the latest case at the US Appeals court in Washington, DC, shows this.

This case began before the last crash of the Boeing Max in 2019.

In a press conference today, Paul Hudson shared some background of where he was coming from, why he called for the press conference, and where he was going with the case.

My name is Paul Hudson. Im the president of Flyers Rights. Paul is also designated to the FAA safety advisory committees.

I was unaware of the max problems until after the first crash.

No one else was either.

Associates at the FAA certainly knew some things, and Boeing knew a lot about how defective their plane was.

The first crash in October of 2019 was far away in Indonesia.

There were no Americans on board.

I was paying attention to it. But then I got a phone call from a frequent traveler. He told me there was a real problem here.

I contacted the Boeing representative with whom Ive been acquainted for many years.

The fact that the plane had a haywire flight control system that had taken over caused many ups and downs and then crashed, killing everyone on this brand-new aircraft.

I asked him why Boeing hadnt grounded this plane.

This was the first week in December of 2018.

He answered: Well, its under investigation with the NTSB, but we cant tell you anything. Its all secret.

I waited a few weeks. I wait a little longer, but I shouldnt have done that.

In March, the second plane went down. Now we had 346 lives lost.

I then met with the associate administrator for safety at the FAA.

His name was Ali Brahimi. I asked him why.

He responded: We wont release the information on any fix to this system. He assured me: We know its safe the next time after it is un-grounded.

The FAA, after the first crash, has said its safe.

Boeing has said its safe.

And even after the second crash, they all said it was safe.

It turned out that China, perhaps Canada, and some other countries had grounded it, and then they overruled the FAA essentially and grounded the plane.

Ali Bahrami said, well keep everything secret, and theres no reason I can say to change things.

Of course, we disagreed and filed a formal freedom of Information request.

It was ignored.

Oh, and by the way, 70 other organizations and people also filed a freedom of information or wire requests that were also ignored.

Flyers Rights was the only one that took it to court. In December of 2019, we began this legal action.

This morning, there was an oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Now the issue is: Should the FAA be able to keep secret all the data relating to its decisions on aircraft certification and, more broadly, on safety enforcement generally?

We think the answer should be no, particularly when you have a crash.

The information should be public or at least released to outside experts so they can evaluate it.

The FAA disagrees.

They want to keep everything secret.

Following the litigation that began in the district court. We found out that they used approximately 95 documents, 9500 pages of documents, to ground the Boeing Max.

In November of 2020, virtually none of it was released.

And everything was labeled a trade secret or proprietary information.

Also, the individuals involved were kept secret under the Personal Privacy Protection Act.

This policy, if its ratified by the appeal court, wont just apply to the Max. It wont just apply to the FAA.

Itll apply to all federal agencies.

Itll apply to everyone, especially those that have jurisdiction over health and safety, because under the FAA policy, almost everything can be labeled as proprietary or trade secrets or some other exception, and that will essentially collapse the intention of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which is to make a government agency, decisions transparent.

We thought we had some progress in this because the Boeing CEO and the former FAA administrator promised to be transparent.

Congress promised the public that everything would be transparent.

However, when they got to court, it was a different story.

They said they didnt mean what they said.

That was just puffery that had nothing to do with the actual policy.

About a dozen safety experts who agreed with us, including some stakeholders like the Flight Attendants Union, testified, but it didnt matter.

Boeing prevailed at the district court level. And now, these experts also filed a brief in the current appeal.

This morning it was argued by our lead counsel, Joseph Sandler.

Joseph Sandler explained:

I think its safe to say that despite the commitment of the current administration to greater openness and transparency, and meaningful enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act, the court agreed to make it more challenging to find out.

In 2019, the Supreme Court held that if information is normally treated as confidential and proprietary by a business that submits it to a government agency, the presumption is it can be withheld from the public.

So that decision has threatened to make it much more difficult to figure out the basis for agency decisions involving any regulated industry, whether its airlines, cars, or whatever it is.

And in this case, as Paul explained, the FAA deferred it to Boeings determination that every piece of paper they submitted, every documentation minute to persuade the agency to ground the 737 Max, was confidential and proprietary.

It had to be withheld from the public.

I think we were encouraged this morning that the panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit expressed skepticism and concern about the FAAs efforts to throw a complete blanket of secrecy over every document that Boeing had submitted.

It included the FAA comments and responses to Boeings proposed fixes to the aircraft design. It includes the test procedures, and the means of compliance that Boeing itself proposed to demonstrate its compliance with the FAA regulations.

In fact, when this appeal was first filed, the government urged the Court of Appeals to throw it out without even hearing it based on some refinements of the district courts decision, and the court decided to hear it.

Were hopeful that there will to some extent, efforts not to allow to keep everything secret on the part of the FAA.

But it will be necessary for the lower courts to find ways to limit the damage to the Supreme Court decision, to the proper implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, and ultimately may be necessary for Congress to act further if we cant achieve it through the courts.

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Boeing and FAA put the US Freedom of Information Act in Danger - eTurboNews | eTN