After the October hearing, the families came to Pierson and Jacobsen in a Mexican restaurant. A tree microphone from a documentary crew floated over Pierson's head. Jacobsen took out a suitcase under the table and Pierson handed Glass Awards, from their foundation, in honor of the leadership of the families in the field of aviation safety. Pierson improvised a speech for each.
Chris Moore thought, well, this was unexpected. “You don't think, oh, I can't wait to ever get a prize.” But at this point in the terrible five -year battle that he never wanted, “shaking my fist to the clouds,” as he expressed it, felt a sign of the efforts of the zoom group nice. Moore knows that all these facts and the search for accountability also serves a different purpose: to help him protect against his bottomless sorrow.
Pierson is still struggling with his own grief, a completely different species. Could he have done more to prevent the crashes? “I don't think I'll be ever …” He leaves a long exhalation. “I will ever stop feeling that way.”
Listening I thought of something that Doug Pasternak, the main researcher of the MAX report, told me about his conversations with Pierson. “He was devastated. He did have an idea of, “guilt” may not be the word, but responsibility. He just wished there was something that could have been done to prevent these horrible accidents. “
Pierson could not prevent the crashes, although no one I spoke with thought he could have done more. But he could become the man who no longer drops Max from the sky. He could consider every report to work out possible explanations in an RV -Kitchenette. He could be the dismissed man who pushes the authorities to watch, not, Garlic– under every last Boeing Rock. If a business and regulatory culture of JA -Men and women led to the death of 346 people, then Pierson would like to be the no, which does not give an advantage of the doubt.
The new documents, with all their promise to bring Pierson's disputed electrical theory home, eventually came down to less than he had hoped. The NTSB told Pierson that it would not hand over the papers to the Max Crash researchers – had concluded things, the board said – but he could do this himself.
Boeing wiggles in the dark, for civil and criminal courts, in the FAA, in the congress, pending the last door plug report of the NTSB. Observers say that 2025 will be the central year of Boeing: the company turns under its new CEO or collapses on a Doom Loop. Pierson promises to keep talking.
“For me it was always about not allowing me to remain silent,” he says. The foundation recently received its first donations and now has a payroll. They start to check other aircraft models and talk to a university about analyzing broad data “to be a pain of equal optimity in the butt,” says Pierson. The man who certainly hoped Boeing would disappear that would instead institutionalized to get stuck.
When Pierson said goodbye to me in DC, his farewell words were: “Don't fly the max.” I couldn't bring myself to tell him. That is exactly what I was booked for, the 7:41 PM from Dulles to San Francisco. It was the one I could catch after the whistleblower event at Capitol Hill and that night still walk into my house. After all, the commercial flight would be about the convenience, which collapsed the wingspan of a country in a Tuesday evening living work traffic. At this point in aviation history, we passengers should have to Being able to choose a flight alone on time.
That evening I read through the air in Seat 10C and read the maximum examination of the US House Committee, a disruption of illusions. Like many kites, I had made risks with risk a long time ago. I had comforted the statistics, called up trust in the engineers and assembly workers, the pilots, the system. I would have chased the knowledge – paralyzing, if you let it in – that walking in an airplane is an extraordinary trust act. Deep in the report I reached the part about a senior manager at Boeing's Factory in Renton, a man named Ed Pierson, who apparently knew what we all know when we calm ourselves by thinking, They wouldn't let it fly if it wasn't safe. We all trust someone to be the 'she'.
Let us know what you think of this article. Submit a letter to the editor at Mail@CBNewz.
