Downfall: The Case Against Boeing is an infuriating documentary about how the aircraft’s manufacturer’s corporate culture led to the deaths of 346 people among them 32 Kenyans.
The documentary now streaming on Netflix Kenya features interviews from the families of the air crash victims including Zipporah Kuria who lost her father in the Ethiopian plane crash of 2019.
The documentary begins with Garima Sethi who gives an account of the last time she saw her husband Captain Bhavye Suneja who piloted Lion Air flight 610 which crashed into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff on October 29, 2018, before pivoting to Zipporah Kuria who lost her father Joseph Kuria nineteen weeks later on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.
The hour-long film highlights how Boeing blamed the dead pilots in blatantly xenophobic attacks instead of claiming any responsibility. With searing interviews from journalists, pilots and aviation experts the documentary sheds light on how Boeing’s financial corner-cutting caused unwitting pilots to fly planes that were engineered to kill them in order to save money.
Since then and with evidence that puts the blame on Boeing no one has been prosecuted for the 346 deaths. In a recent interview director, Rory Kennedy said that the importance of retelling the story of the Boeing 737 max crashes is because “they killed 346 people and nobody has gone to prison.”
Downfall: The case Against Boeing is now streaming on Netflix.
