Medan, Indonesia – For Neuis Marfuah, the recent near-catastrophe involving a 737 Max plane flown by Alaska Airlines brought back painful memories and anger.
Her daughter, 23-year-old Vivian Hasna Afifa, was killed when Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia on October 29, 2018, killing all 189 people on board.
“How could this have happened? I can’t stop thinking about it,” Marfuah told media.
On Thursday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that it had approved the Boeing 737 Max 9 to return to service after more than 170 of the aircraft were grounded on January 6, the day after a panel on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 blew out at 14,000 feet with 177 people on board.
The FAA’s “exhaustive” review gave the watchdog the confidence to “proceed to the inspection and maintenance phase”, FAA administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement that outlined “unacceptable” quality assurance issues.
No one was killed or injured in the incident, but for Marfuah, the news of the near-disaster was hard to bear.
“It should have been enough after the events in Indonesia and Ethiopia to decide to stop operating the Max 737 aircraft once and for all,” Marfuah said.
Less than five months after the Lion Air crash in Indonesia, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa Airport en route to Kenya, killing all 157 people on board.
Following the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, a US congressional report found that Boeing operated a “culture of concealment” and that the 737 Max planes were “marred by technical design failures”, including issues with the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).
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