Lawsuit Filed Against Boeing in Charleston for Missing MH370 Flight

Flight Lt. Jayson Nichols looks at a map as he flies aboard a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion aircraft during a search operation of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Attorneys representing nearly four dozen families and victims of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 filed a lawsuit in a Charleston federal court last week against Boeing, the manufacturer of the 777 that disappeared in 2014.

The lawsuit alleges a littany of manufacturing defects in the missing airliner that were present and documented before disappearing in March 2014.

The problems included “defective and inadequately protected” wiring, a defective transponder, faulty avionics and communications systems in the cockpit, among other problems.

“The defects caused and/or allowed a massive and cascading sequence of electrical failures onboard the lost plane which disabled vital systems, including the lost plane’s ACARS and Mode S Transponder,” the lawsuit alleges.

Those failures would have made it impossible for the crew to communicate with ground control or fly the aircraft, leaving them to only sit and wait for the 777 to run out of fuel and crash into the ocean, according to the lawsuit.

Further, Boeing made decisions to under-equip the missing 777 with a Flight Data Recorder (“FDR”), and a Cockpit Voice Recorder (“CVR”), with Emergency Locator Transmitters (“ELTs”) and Underwater Locator Beacons (“ULBs”) that were “ineffective, especially in crashes or losses taking place over water.”

“Boeing elected to equip the lost plane with these ineffective ELTs and ULBs despite the presence of other readily available and reasonable alternative technologies that would have allowed the lost plane, the FDR, and the CVR to be tracked in real-time anywhere in the world, especially in cases of crashes, disruption of communications and other losses,” it reads.

The lawsuit, filed by Gregory Keith who is being represented by Motley Rice attorney Mary Schiavo, seeks unspecified damaged over $75,000 and other expenses.

Schiavo is a former inspector general at the U.S. Department of Transportation and is commonly seen on CNN as an aviation expert and analyst.

Flight 370 was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with a full crew and nearly 250 passengers. It disappeared over the ocean.

In the three years since its disappearance, some crews have found bits of wreckage but nothing that has pointed to the precise location of the crash. In January, the search, spearheaded by the Australians, was suspended.

The lawsuit says Boeing never signed on to assist with the search.