Marine Corps families say Osprey is ‘unsafe and unairworthy’ in lawsuit over deadly 2022 crash
The families of four Marines who died in a 2022 MV-22 Osprey crash say Boeing, Bell Textron and engine-maker Rolls Royce lied about the plane's safety.
BY MATT WHITE | PUBLISHED MAY 23, 2024 12:49 PM EDT
The families of four Marines who died when their MV-22 Osprey seized up and crashed on a routine training flight say the companies that built the troubled plane made “intentionally” or “recklessly false statements” about its safety, and put the Marines into an “unsafe and unairworthy aircraft.”
In a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in San Diego, the families of four Marines killed on Swift 11 — an Osprey flight that crashed in 2022 after suffering catastrophic engine failure during routine training in California — say aerospace giants Boening, Bell Textron, and Rolls Royce “supplied false information about the safety of the aircraft” to government and military officials.
Boeing and Bell Textron are the two lead contractors who build the Osprey. Rolls Royce builds the Osprey’s engines. A Marine Corps investigation of the crash found that the $90 million aircraft suffered a “hard clutch engagement,” or HCE failure within its transmission, which caused its engines to fail, a catastrophic failure that gave the crew no chance to survive.
“There were no prior indications of an impending dual HCE event, no steps that [Swift 11’s pilots] could have taken to prevent its occurrence, and no means of recovery once the compound emergency commenced,” investigators said. The report also cleared maintenance troops at Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364 of any responsibility, deciding that no mechanical fix would have prevented the HCE.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/osprey-lawsuit-marines-corps-unsafe/