CEO defends safety record
The CEO of Boeing defended the company’s safety record and declined to take any more than partial blame for two deadly crashes of its best-selling plane even while saying Monday that the company has nearly finished an update that “will make the airplane even safer.”
Chairman and CEO Dennis Muilenburg took reporters’ questions for the first time since accidents involving the Boeing 737 Max in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people and plunged Boeing into its deepest crisis in years.
Muilenburg said that Boeing followed the same design and certification process it has always used to build safe planes, and he denied that the Max was rushed to market.
The CEO said Boeing provided steps that should be taken in response to problems like those encountered by pilots of the planes that crashed. “In some cases those procedures were not completely followed,” he said.
The news conference, held after Boeing’s annual meeting in Chicago, came as new questions have arisen around the Max, which has been grounded worldwide since mid-March.
Besides the software update, Boeing will present the FAA with a plan for training pilots on changes. The company is pushing for training that can be done on tablet computers and, if airlines want to offer it, additional time in flight simulators.
