Boeing CEO Promises Greater Transparency on 737 MAX
17 June 2019 - 01:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Andrew Tangel and Andy Pasztor
PARIS -- Boeing Co. Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg on Sunday
said the company had made communications lapses with its embattled
737 MAX jet and promised greater transparency after regulators,
airlines and pilots faulted the aerospace giant for not being
forthcoming with key information.
Mr. Muilenburg's comments come as the Federal Aviation
Administration, barring last-minute schedule changes or unexpected
hurdles, as early as this week has tentative plans to begin test
flights of proposed software fixes to the MAX fleet, according to
people familiar with the matter.
The long-anticipated certification tests, these people said,
have been planned with the support of European and Canadian
regulators. They could take a week or more to complete, according
to one person briefed on the anticipated timeline, and would be
followed by additional weeks of FAA experts analyzing and formally
documenting the test results. Engineering or handling problems
uncovered during the tests, these people emphasized, could extend
that timeline.
The MAX was grounded more than three months ago after the
crashes that killed all 346 people on the jets. Investigators have
implicated a flight-control system in the accidents.
Boeing has devised changes to the MAX to fix the system. While
Chicago-based aerospace giant is making progress on getting the MAX
back in the air, Mr. Muilenburg said the timeline for restoring
service with the airliner is still uncertain. "We haven't given
airlines a specific timetable," he said, adding that "this will all
be governed by safety."
Mr. Muilenburg said he was "disappointed" the company wasn't
more forthcoming with information when engineers in 2017 learned
that cockpit alerts intended to warn pilots about certain sensor
malfunctions didn't work or weren't operating as intended due to a
software error. The company previously said senior Boeing leaders
didn't learn about the issue until after the Oct. 29, 2018, Lion
Air crash.
Write to Andrew Tangel at Andrew.Tangel@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor
at andy.pasztor@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 16, 2019 11:14 ET (15:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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