Hours after announcing a leadership shakeup, Boeing provided a fresh batch of internal documents on the grounded 737 MAX jetliner that paint a “very disturbing picture” regarding employees’ concerns about the troubled plane, according to a House committee aide.
The documents were submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration and congressional staff investigating the issues with the aircraft, which has been grounded since March following a pair of crashes that killed 346 people, officials said.
The disclosure came the same day that Boeing ousted chief executive Dennis Muilenburg amid a crisis over the handling of the aftermath of the accidents in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
“Similar to other records previously disclosed by Boeing, the records appear to point to a very disturbing picture of both concerns expressed by Boeing employees about the company’s commitment to safety and efforts by some employees” to make sure Boeing’s production plans were not disrupted, said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The committee will continue to review these and other records provided by Boeing as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation,” the aide said.
Boeing said in a statement that it “proactively brought these communications to the FAA and Congress as part of our commitment to transparency with our regulators and the oversight committees,” according to Reuters.
The tone and content “does not reflect the company we are and need to be,” Boeing said. “We have made significant changes as a company in the past nine months to enhance our safety processes, organizations, and culture.”
The document dump contained instant messages from a former Boeing 737 chief test pilot Mark Forkner in November 2016, a source briefed on the matter told Reuters.
In October, Boeing turned over the messages to the FAA between Forkner and another pilot, Patrik Gustavsson, according to Bloomberg News.
Forkner expressed concern that the automated anti-stall Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, later implicated in the crashes was “running rampant” and said he might have unknowingly misled the FAA about it.
In separate emails he sent to an unnamed FAA official, Forkner said he was “Jedi-mind tricking” regulators outside the US into accepting Boeing’s suggested training for the plane, Bloomberg reported.
David Gerger, a lawyer for Forkner, said issues cited in the messages were the result of balky simulator software and not a result of problems with the aircraft itself.
Forkner believed the jet was safe and didn’t mislead the FAA, added Gerger, who didn’t respond to requests to comment from Bloomberg on the latest messages and whether they involved his client.
Boeing announced it was replacing Muilenburg with Chairman David Calhoun, 62, a former General Electric executive, saying the company needed to “restore confidence” and “repair relationships with regulators, customers and all other stakeholders.”
The 737 MAX was grounded after the March crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight. In October 2018, a Lion Air 737 MAX crashed into the Java Sea.
The two fatal nose-dives have been blamed on the misfiring of the computerized system, prompting Muilenburg to admit to congressional lawmakers that Boeing made mistakes in developing air safety software.
With Post wires