Boeing boss: I’m not going to take flight
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg says he intends to continue as chairman — and survived a vote to remove him — amid persistent questions since the planemaker’s 737 MAX 8 crashed in Ethiopia in March, the second in just five months.
The 34-year Boeing veteran was asked, during a news conference at Boeing’s annual meeting Monday in Chicago, whether he considered resigning.
“My clear intent is to continue to lead on the front of safety and quality and integrity,” he said. “It’s really important to continue to stress that. We deeply regret what happened . ... It gets to the core of our company.”
The remarks come as the American planemaker continues to work on a software update for an automated system that seems to have malfunctioned in two deadly crashes.
On March 10, a Kenya-bound MAX 8 plane, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, crashed minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people onboard. Last October, all 189 people died aboard another MAX 8 jet that crashed off Indonesia.
The two accidents led to a worldwide halt in use of the MAX 8, and the move has hurt Boeing’s bottom line. The company said last week its earnings dropped by 21% in the first quarter of 2019, according to CNN.
The maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or MCAS, pushes down the plane’s nose if it senses the risk of a stall. But Muilenburg said Monday the feature isn’t an anti-stall system, but rather one “designed to provide handling qualities” to the pilots — and insisted it met Boeing’s certification criteria and operated as designed.
He refused to blame the feature as the “single” reason for the crashes, which he said were caused by “a chain of events.”
“Our job is to focus on safety, not on speculation,” Muilenburg said, noting investigations are still underway.
During the event, shareholders voted against a proposal to strip Muilenburg of his chairman position.
Muilenburg vowed to rebuild public confidence, and declared he’d be on the first flights of the MAX 8 once it’s back in service.