The young man is a rocket scientist. Big Air assigned him to study past plane crashes to make future planes safer. In 2014 he studied the new features for an old plane and was ignored by bean counters in management more interested in selling more planes than expensive adjustments.
Airline customers are in the business of safe travel for two hundred passengers a flight. These customers thought the new features on the old plane would require two days of simulator training time per pilot plus two days of per diem for each pilot. The competition to Big Air said their new planes would not require these costs.
Big Air convinced its customers and regulators that pilots could be trained in an hour on an I pad to contend with a design that could take control of the aircraft. The competition spent millions of dollars through shell companies and sponsorships of F1 Formula Teams in favor of executives responsible for buying planes. Big Air sacrificed safety to compete while the competition simply cheated.
In 2018, four years after the observations of Mr Ewbanks, two of Big Air's planes crashed within five months. In the first crash the Captain pulled back on the controls twenty one times and in each case the system over rode him. The Captain turned over the controls to the First Officer while he searched for a solution in the manuals. Two pulls later the Captain took back the controls as the plane hit the water at 500 miles per hour.
Big Air deflected. The native government tried to get the victim's families to settle for $91,200 per person and sign a release of all claims. The families filed suit in the United States and Big Air settled at $1.2 million or more each. The planes flew for another five months before a second crash. Those families joined the legal post mortem and the planes were grounded.
Three hundred and eighty six lives, an estimated $10 billion in damages, and a Congressional hearing later, the Big Air CEO was fired with a $60 million parachute. Separately the competition settled a four year bribery investigation for $4 billion, fired one hundred miscreants, and replaced its Leadership Team.
The Department of Justice has a grand jury investigation into who knew what when at Big Air.
And Mr Ewbanks six years after his prescient report has been invited to testify before Congress.
Airline customers are in the business of safe travel for two hundred passengers a flight. These customers thought the new features on the old plane would require two days of simulator training time per pilot plus two days of per diem for each pilot. The competition to Big Air said their new planes would not require these costs.
Big Air convinced its customers and regulators that pilots could be trained in an hour on an I pad to contend with a design that could take control of the aircraft. The competition spent millions of dollars through shell companies and sponsorships of F1 Formula Teams in favor of executives responsible for buying planes. Big Air sacrificed safety to compete while the competition simply cheated.
In 2018, four years after the observations of Mr Ewbanks, two of Big Air's planes crashed within five months. In the first crash the Captain pulled back on the controls twenty one times and in each case the system over rode him. The Captain turned over the controls to the First Officer while he searched for a solution in the manuals. Two pulls later the Captain took back the controls as the plane hit the water at 500 miles per hour.
Big Air deflected. The native government tried to get the victim's families to settle for $91,200 per person and sign a release of all claims. The families filed suit in the United States and Big Air settled at $1.2 million or more each. The planes flew for another five months before a second crash. Those families joined the legal post mortem and the planes were grounded.
Three hundred and eighty six lives, an estimated $10 billion in damages, and a Congressional hearing later, the Big Air CEO was fired with a $60 million parachute. Separately the competition settled a four year bribery investigation for $4 billion, fired one hundred miscreants, and replaced its Leadership Team.
The Department of Justice has a grand jury investigation into who knew what when at Big Air.
And Mr Ewbanks six years after his prescient report has been invited to testify before Congress.
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