WASHINGTON — Nadia Milleron says not enough has changed in aviation safety since her daughter’s death in 2019.
Her daughter, Samya Stumo, died when the Boeing plane she was aboard crashed on its way to Kenya. Later, investigators determined one cause was a defective automatic flight control system that relied on one senor and caused nose dives.
Since then, Milleron, a Sheffield activist and former Congressional candidate, has been pushing for safer air travel.
On Tuesday, she attended a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on aviation safety. Bryan Bedford, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, took questions from legislators for more than two hours.
Before the hearing, Milleron said she lobbied legislators, asking that they question Bedford at the hearing about safety issues with Boeing Max 737 jets.
That did not become a focus of the hearing, however. Legislators focused on other issues, including an air traffic controller shortage and the Potomac mid-air collision between a plane and a helicopter earlier this year that killed 67 people.
“They’re not talking any more about the defects on the Boeing airplanes,” Milleron said. “That’s because it has kind of moved out of the news cycle — but it doesn’t mean it moved out of the safety cycle.“
Milleron said she will continue to advocate for improvements “otherwise they will continue to forget about it.”
After the hearing ended, she said she spoke with Bedford about her concerns. She said he was receptive.
Milleron and the Foundation for Aviation Safety, a nonprofit led by a former manager at a Boeing Max factory, are calling attention to issues with the planes. The foundation created a list of problems regulators have flagged, including a list of airworthiness directives, regulations the FAA issues to correct safety problems, about Boeing’s 737 jets that date back several years.
Neither Boeing nor the FAA immediately responded to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The planes were grounded for nearly two years in 2019 after the crash that killed Milleron’s daughter and another crash in Indonesia. In total, 346 people died in the two crashes.
Last month, a judge approved a deal that allowed Boeing to not face criminal conspiracy charges over the two crashes and required the company to pay $1 billion in fines, payments to the victims’ families and safety improvements, the Associated Press reported. Milleron is part of an appeal to that decision.
Regulators have flagged other safety problems. Several months ago, the FAA announced it was seeking to fine Boeing $3.1 million for safety violations from September 2023 to February 2024.
Milleron wants to empower people to participate in government. Lobbying can be done by regular people, she said.
“On any of these issues, anything government should be doing, accountability of corporations, we can go to Congress and participate,” she said. “I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s quick, but it is possible and I think it’s important for people to know this is their right.”
