Senators grill Boeing CEO over 2 crashes

WASHINGTON» Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg faced withering questions from senators Tuesday about two overseas crashes of 737 Max jets and whether the company concealed information about a critical flight system.

“We have made mistakes, and we got some things wrong,” Muilenburg conceded.

Some members of the Senate Commerce Committee cut off Muilenburg when they believed he was failing to answer their questions about a key flightcontrol system implicated in the crashes.

Boeing successfully lobbied regulators to keep any explanation of the system, called MCAS, from pilot manuals and training. After the crashes, the company tried to blame the pilots, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

“Those pilots never had a chance,” Blumenthal said. Passengers “never had a chance. They were in flying coffins as a result of Boeing deciding that it was going to conceal MCAS from the pilots.”

Muilenburg denied that Boeing ever blamed the pilots. Several times this past spring and summer he said the accidents were caused by a “chain of events,” not a single factor. The comments were widely seen as deflecting blame, including to the pilots.

The CEO told senators Tuesday that Boeing has always trained pilots to respond to the same effect caused by an MCAS failure

— a condition called runaway trim — which can be caused by other problems.

Muilenburg and Boeing’s chief engineer for commercial airplanes, John Hamilton, spent about 80 minutes at the witness table. The committee then heard from two safety officials who helped shape reports about the 737 Max jets.

The hearing occurred exactly one year after a 737 Max crashed off the coast of Indonesia and more than seven months after a second crash in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died in the crashes. Muilenburg’s testimony was the first by a Boeing executive since the crashes. The CEO is scheduled to testify before a House committee Wednesday.

Indonesian investigators have said that Boeing’s design of MCAS contributed to the crash of a Lion Air Max last October. Ethiopian authorities are continuing to probe the second crash, involving a jet flown by Ethiopian Airlines, which led to a worldwide grounding of 737 Max jets.

“Both of these accidents were entirely preventable,” said committee chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

More than a dozen relatives of passengers who died in the accidents attended the hearing. Wicker invited them to stand and hold up large photos of their relatives, which they had carried into the room. Muilenburg turned in his seat to look at them.