Rodney Lewis says it was hard to watch the livestream of a military memorial for his son, Cpt. Antoine Lewis.
"It is really heartfelt, greatly heart felt, when they call his name and he doesn’t have the ability to respond," he said.
His family is still devastated by the loss and curious about how a jet like the 737 Max 8, already involved in one plane crash, could be allowed to fly again before the investigation was complete.
"You have the (National Transportation Safety Board) and everybody looking into what happened," Lewis said. "If there was a problem they had not resolved or if there was an issue they thought was a possibility, at least stop the aircraft from flying."
Lewis is a private pilot and his son was learning how to fly. That’s what make the crash even harder for him to understand.
"It sounds like they had some system on the plane that could actually take control and leave the pilots without anything to do," he said. "When you are close to the ground, that’s dangerous."
Now Boeing is trying to address some of those dangers, pushing out a software patch for its MCAS anti-stalling system and putting new alarms in the whole 737 Max fleet.
"Our entire team stands behind the quality and safety of the aircraft we design produce and and support," said Boeing's CEO Dennis A. Muilenburg.
But Lewis wonders if Boeing’s statements and safety changes are too little too late.
"You wonder," he said. Are the profits more important than the people that are being served by making those profits? I think a lot of people were placed at great risk."
