Downfall: The Case Against Boeing exposes how avarice and iniquity plague an aviation giant

Mona

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Flying is the safest mode of travel; this is what we believe in the 21st century. With confidence we board planes, choosing one airline over the other, concerned about ticket pricing and comfort, seldom thinking about the plane! We bet that’s going to change after you see Downfall: The Case Against Boeing.

Boeing has been a safe, trusted carrier for over a hundred years. That the firm deals with rockets, satellites and missiles, makes one believe them. Only as Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed within five months of each other, on October 29, 2018, and on March 10, 2019, respectively, was changed Boeing’s reputation.

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

Director: Rory Kennedy Rating: ***

That’s the story Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and US Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s youngest child Rory Kennedy brings in her documentary. Serving pilots, families of the victims, Boeing employees, aviation experts, investigative journalists and Congressmen come together in this story, which is built on avarice and iniquity.

It begins with Lion Air Flight 610’s crash, as Garima Sethi recounts the wee hours of October 29. Her husband Captain Bhavya Suneja, the pilot, took along 188 crew members and passengers on a fairly routine flight. Only the plane he was flying had one powerful MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), which took over control within minutes of taking off from Jakarta.

Not only that, Captain Suneja didn’t know how to manoeuvre it; he didn’t even know that it was on the flight. That’s the height of irresponsibility Boeing showed, for what? The greed to make it on the Wall Street, to fight stiff competition, make the machine fuel-efficient and cut back on training! The quarterly bonuses, share stock value led to this downfall of Boeing from top to bottom. By and by, Kennedy builds this sordid saga.

The documentary that premiered at Sundance 2022 follows the story week by week, as different elements come into play. The blamegame on low cost carriers, pilots that were not ‘American’ and how one crash led to another.

Even after the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash, where 157 lives were lost, the blame rested on ‘inexperienced’ pilots, and the erroneous machine 737 MAX were cleared by Boeing to fly. Only led by China, different countries grounded the Boeing’s money spinner — result of human greed, corporate mindset and the power of lobbying in America.

Interview by interview, piece by piece, Kennedy, who has to credit Last Days in Vietnam, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and numerous other thought-provoking documentaries, stitches this documentary well. One is in awe of Boeing and its safety standards, work culture to begin with. And how it trickles away over a period of time, as McDonnell Douglas takes over.

What strikes the most is that even after the first crash, Boeing and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continued to take the risk. If one couldn’t trust a ‘Fortune Global 500’ list (2020) company for one’s safety, whom can you? Not just profits and stocks, human emotions were relegated aside with Boeing not even acknowledging the loss of 346 lives!

As much as corporate work culture and competitive pressure, it’s the modern life that reveals itself through this curious case of investigative journalism. Downfall offers a rude awakening. One feels for the victims, disgust for heartless corporate comes out. One comes a step closer to understand the ‘anti-vaxxers’ standpoint; who is to be trusted today, can one actually trust pharmaceutical giants? A $2.5 billion penalty when Boeing made $76 billion in sales, did Boeing literally get away with murder?

The documentary is gripping, intriguing, giving a glimpse into the aviation industry; as for the uninitiated, the black box is basically orange, MCAS has since been fixed, aviation training at I-pads and simulators. At an hour and 29 minutes, the documentary covers a lot of ground – rise and fall of an aviation empire; grief, greed and gross disregard of human values. Documentary is the new genre, thanks to OTT to revealing a world stranger than fiction.