美国国家公共电台 NPR For Family Of A Lion Air Crash Victim, 'The Happiness Is Gone'

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A relative of a plane crash victim has had to relive the disaster. The man lost a brother in the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX airplane in Indonesia. Then, in recent weeks, another 737 crashed in Ethiopia, seizing the attention of the world. Now the Indonesian man is one of those who filed the lawsuit¹. NPR's Jim Zarroli spoke² with him.

JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE³: The grim news came early in the morning of October 29.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Rescuers are scouring⁴ an area of sea off the island of Java for the wreckage⁵ of an airliner⁶ that crashed with 189 people on board.

ZARROLI: A routine, short flight from Jakarta, Indonesia, to the city of Pangkal Pinang had crashed into the water. In Jakarta, a man named Fenliks (ph) learned about the crash when a friend texted him the news. And right away Fenliks - that's his full name - felt a wave of fear. His older brother was flying to Pangkal Pinang that morning.

FENLIKS: I didn't know at the time what is the flight number of my brother flight. But then I called my parents. I called my father and asked him.

ZARROLI: His father did a little research and came back with horrifying⁷ news. His brother had been on Lion Air Flight JT610, the same one that had disappeared into the sea.

FENLIKS: So I say, are you sure? Are you sure it's JT610? He says, yeah. Yeah, that's JT610. So - oh, my God, I think that something very, very bad happened.

ZARROLI: Fenliks spent the next few hours texting his brother. There was no reply. No one on the flight had survived. Lion Air JT610 had encountered trouble almost immediately after takeoff. What happened is now the subject of a massive investigation⁸ taking place on three continents. Attorney Austin Bartlett represents some of the victims' families.

AUSTIN BARTLETT: We now know from looking at flight data that basically the aircraft was, for lack of a better way of putting it, you know, porpoising (ph) or oscillating - you know, almost, you know, undulating in the air.

ZARROLI: Boeing had designed the plane to make it more fuel-efficient than the existing 737. That meant moving the engines forward, which changed the plane's center of gravity. To compensate⁹ for that, Boeing installed a computer system meant to stabilize¹⁰ the plane. But something went wrong, and the pilots spent their last few minutes struggling to keep the nose of the plane from dropping. Attorney Charles Herrmann has also sued on the families' behalf.

CHARLES HERRMANN: These pilots had no idea about it. It was like they were fighting a ghost, if you will, because they didn't know what was causing it.

ZARROLI: In the months since then, dozens of lawsuits¹¹ have been filed against Boeing in U.S. courts. They maintain there was something defective¹² in the plane. They've been filed by relatives of the plane's pilots, flight attendants and passengers. Among them is Fenliks, whose brother was on the plane. I asked Fenliks what he hopes to gain from going to court. He said his parents had struggled to put their kids through school. At 31, his only brother, Varian Utama (ph), was a building contractor¹³. He had a side business as a distributor of Italian bicycles, which he loved. Now his parents are heartbroken.

FENLIKS: The thing is it's totally changed now. It's totally changed. Now they - it looks like their happiness is gone, something like that. And worry is coming.

ZARROLI: Fenliks says his brother left behind a widow and baby who have to be taken care of. They have refused a lump-sum payment from the airline. It would have prevented them from suing. Boeing didn't respond to requests for comment. In the past, the company has settled cases like this out of court. And the Ethiopia crash has only increased the pressure on the company. For Fenliks and his family, hearing about that crash meant going through the pain all over again.

FENLIKS: I hope that nobody going to experience this kind of thing, yeah. It's really hard. No, not easy - really, it's not easy.

ZARROLI: Jim Zarroli, NPR News.

1 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

2 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 scouring   

擦[洗]净，冲刷，洗涤

参考例句：

• The police are scouring the countryside for the escaped prisoners. 警察正在搜索整个乡村以捉拿逃犯。
• This is called the scouring train in wool processing. 这被称为羊毛加工中的洗涤系列。

5 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

6 airliner   

n.客机，班机

参考例句：

• The pilot landed the airliner safely.驾驶员使客机安全着陆。
• The passengers were shepherded across the tarmac to the airliner.旅客们被引导走过跑道去上飞机。

7 horrifying   

a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的

参考例句：

• He went to great pains to show how horrifying the war was. 他极力指出战争是多么的恐怖。
• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate. 战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。

8 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

9 compensate   

vt.补偿，赔偿；酬报 vi.弥补；补偿；抵消

参考例句：

• She used her good looks to compensate her lack of intelligence. 她利用她漂亮的外表来弥补智力的不足。
• Nothing can compensate for the loss of one's health. 一个人失去了键康是不可弥补的。

10 stabilize   

vt.（使）稳定，使稳固，使稳定平衡；vi.稳定

参考例句：

• They are eager to stabilize currencies.他们急于稳定货币。
• His blood pressure tended to stabilize.他的血压趋向稳定。

11 lawsuits   

n.诉讼( lawsuit的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Lawsuits involving property rights and farming and grazing rights increased markedly. 涉及财产权，耕作与放牧权的诉讼案件显著地增加。 来自辞典例句
• I've lost and won more lawsuits than any man in England. 全英国的人算我官司打得最多，赢的也多，输的也多。 来自辞典例句

12 defective   

adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的

参考例句：

• The firm had received bad publicity over a defective product. 该公司因为一件次品而受到媒体攻击。
• If the goods prove defective, the customer has the right to compensation. 如果货品证明有缺陷， 顾客有权索赔。

13 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。