Fired or resigned, he will undoubtedly collect a multi million dollar severance package. This despite what any prosecutor would consider criminal actions that would put most people in jail.
Even the so called Board members should be removed if only for keeping him on after all of the evidence in this fraud became public. There's more to this story than what is being disclosed because the public and industry would freak out and buryBoeing and it's complicit executive management.
And what of the FAA that were so cozy and irresponsible in allowing Boeing to manage the fundamentals that the Agency was created to ensure the public welfare of Americans and global citizens?
Why hasn't the Post, NYTimes and other investigative journalists revealed the tawdry facts of the Boeing and FAA fraud and criminal complicities?
So now this guy will sit on the beach collecting a financial jackpot while a turnaround professional is being appointed to clean up this mess? Just a PR move to quell the public and industry disdain for a company and federal agency gone bad.
Another textbook example of how the system rewards, not punishes, executive corporate and governmental co-conspirators.
9
In any other country he would go to jail... only here rich people walk away without facing any consequences for their actions and their negligence.
4
he was fired because he was unable to steer them out of the crisis? Maybe because he steered them into the crisis in the first place with the typical corporate greed coupled with lack of foresight leading to shoddy decisions overall. Trying to fix a bad aerodynamic design with software compensation is crazy. they need to redesign the plane and use software to improve functioning.
3
The greatest threat we face in America is a lack of leadership, and not only in government. This was a failure of Boeing leadership at CEO and above. The primary focus of too many top leaders in this country is self-enrichment. Politicians only care about keeping their jobs and the wealth and power that goes with it. Corporate leaders have so much financial incentive to single-mindedly make money that almost nothing else matters. Even in tragic failure, Muilenburg will likely be rewarded in sums of money that most Americans wouldn't earn in 10 lifetimes. Money has corrupted leadership in ways we've not seen since the days of greedy robber barons.
6
Maybe Trump can now ban U.S. tech exports to Airbus (like he did to Huawei) so that Boeing can regain its leading position.
A country's government and its companies should back each other up. Oh! No! Wait! That's what Huawei was accused of doing and the whole reason for the ban, even though nothing actually happened... forget what I said! I'm confused.
That fact that boeing, as a solution to the 737 MAX dilemma, hasn't simply removed the MCAS functionality from the new jet design and then require pilots to be trained on the new airframe is suspicious. Boeing has said all along that MCAS was ONLY added to make the new design handle more like the old and NOT for stability reasons. If that were true, MCAS could easily be removed from the design.
3
The story Below The Fold is this, "...the company and its airline customers have lost billions of dollars."
And Mr. Muilenburg walked of with a forty million dollar parting gift.
What is wrong with this picture?
The creation of the concept of a "corporation" is one of the most significant developments in the history of the human species. It has altered the way in which our entire financial and economic systems are structured and how they work. When it works. But when protects managers and top executives from responsibility, as it so often does in these days of Unicorn and Mega-Corporate disasters, it becomes a cloak of invisibility for scoundrels and fools. And it is time for that to stop. Mr Muilenburg is a millionaire. It is time to ask, are there no homeless shelters? Are there no empty tents in the West Coast viaducts? Are there no consequences for a few hundred human corpses? As corporations teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, is it finally time to share that financial distress with the perpetrators as well as the victims. But don't hold your breath.
3
Companies that dominate industries can get sclerotic. Their entire management becomes consumed with not rocking the boat, of producing great results this quarter, get fat bonuses, with technology and systems they understand totally.
I watched NCR (National Cash Register) go from dominating industries to their city managers refusing newer equipment and buh bye. (The name still lives on) Kodak managers knew how to paste photographic emulsion on celluloid but let the world streak past in "imaging" and buh bye.
And now Boeing, with the amazing opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper let their financial and marketing types tell the engineers to sit down and shut up. This case, no excuse, the US aircraft regulatory and quality system is the best!
It is really our fault -- we let the company become a monopoly and now not only is the firm, all its suppliers, but the the county's balance of payments, even its military aircraft capability.
50 years ago Grumman on Long Island dominated both carrier aircraft and Lunar Landing vehicles -- but were put out of business by our Congress who forced them to "merge". Same story for a dozen other aircraft manufacturers.
2
“Was fires because he was unable to stabilize the company” struck me as unfair. He should have been fired because the policies he oversaw allowed for unsafe planes to be produced. Even if he were a crisis management genius
“...Until then, Boeing’s chief financial officer, ... will serve as interim chief executive.”
In essence that was the whole problem in the first place, right? Financial departments delegating cuts in critical areas, causing defects in critical areas and now, as an insult to injury, cuts in present day non-essential items, causing financial drain to the company, a.k.a. the plane and workers they themselves sabotaged in the first place!
Sounds like the old saying, “The king (finance) is dead! Long live the new king! (finance). If that’s the way things really go, then most of us got into the wrong business segment!
The author wrote:
"Boeing waited months this year to disclose to the F.A.A. that it had found messages from 2016 in which a Boeing pilot complained that MCAS, which was new to the Max, was acting unpredictably in a flight simulator."
Here lies the real problem for the Max and why simply disabling the MCAS won't fix the problem.
The simulation referred to above did not include a simulated damaged/faulty Angle of Attack indicator (as suspected of causing the two fatal crashes) and yet the simulator 'crashed' the plane.
In other words the Max design has even bigger problems than we have been led to believe.
3
He will find a multi million dollar job at another crapified US firm. The Chinese will not buy the next generation of jet aircraft from the US. They will be selling theirs to the US. The only products we make are medical care, litigation, and finance.
2
If a well trained, skilled pilot can do whatever the MCAS does then let him/her do it. Now we have lives lost, families in despair, jobs lost, wastes of money and time all over a device that can't solve a problem that doesn't exist. Where's common sense when we need It?
I wouldn't be surprised if Muilenburg's Executive Severance package was millions more than the total paid to the victims for both plane crashes.
1
- 2017, Boeing received $23.4 billion in contracts from the Pentagon. That accounted for a quarter of Boeing’s net revenues.
- In recent years, the FAA gave Boeing more and more responsibility for self-managing its compliance with (1) the aviation industry’s ‘manufacturing best practices’ (MBPs), and (2) relevant federal regulations.
The “perfect storm” that led to those two crashes was attributable to:
- the FAA abrogating its regulatory and compliance-enforcement responsibilities to Boeing;
- Boeing’s noncompliance with (1) and (2) above, resulting in the deaths of 346 people;
- profound arrogance, incompetence, and inattentiveness at Boeing, from Muilenburg on down;
- an investment community, and a Board of Directors at Boeing, that know that Boeing will continue to receive its $20-25 billion per year in defense-industry contracts, irrespective of its sales of commercial aircraft, and the company’s stock price will recover in years to come.
Like fish that “rot from the head down,” Boeing has many other top executives, other than Muilenburg, who have not been held accountable for those 346 deaths, and almost assuredly never will be. Boeing will make its payouts to the crash victims’ families, and the company will move on.
Would this minimalist outcome - the firing of Muilenburg - have occurred if most of those 346 dead had been Americans, and if those two crashes had occurred on American soil? Of course not. Firing Muilenburg is a “Made in U.S.A.” patch job.
1
Mr Muilenburg has been a very good CEO, a man of high integrity who always put safety first. It was his predecessor that created the MAX airplane. Muilenburg is getting the blame. If anything they should blame his predecessor, Jim McNerney. The new CEO comes from GE, same as McNerney, and the world of finance so don't expect he will be as knowledgable of airplane safety.
20
This man not only should have been fired long ago, he should be prosecuted. He was warned repeatedly by his own people that the MAX wasn’t safe. Even after the first and second crash that killed over 300 people he insisted that the plane did not warrant grounding. Why does the poor man who robs a liquor store go to jail for 20 years but this man, who is responsible for literally scores of deaths, gets a golden parachute!
Putting profits before safety will continue until those in charge are really held responsible. If you run an organization that's kills people, you should be tried for murder. If this happens just one time, you will see a major change for the better in corporate governance.
1
What was his severance paxkage? How big is his GOLDEN PARACHUTE??
The last several months for Boeing has been corporate arrogance at its most disturbing. Hopefully Muilenburg's ouster will lead to a thorough shakeup which gets the company back on the right track.
Crisis Communications 101: rip the bandaid off fast. What took the Boeing board so long?
1
The Boeing executes and the board of directors should all be charged with murder. There should be a trial. This gesture would add a new dimension to business accountability.
1
In a different context, one would have felt sorry for anyone losing his job in X'mas but Muilenburg has been way too arrogant to the end. Even if he were concerned about tens of thousands of jobs hanging in the balance. He deserves it!
As for Boeing, it is a case of too little and too late.
Between the 737 Max and the Starliner, Boeing has been underinvesting and overpromising. The truth is 787 Dreamliner rollout problems like the battery issue should have been the wake up call but Boeing thought it was a free pass. Well, between playing nice with Boeing and keeping his new job, the new FAA Chief is not going to allow Boeing to dictate the terms of 737 Max re-certification but Muilenburg thought it was business as usual. He did not deserve the job
1
From all the angry comments and demands here it would seem that the commenters here are shareholders in the company .
If not, what gives you the right to tell other owners and managers how to run their business .
The role of the government is to ensure safety and that's all .
If the aircraft does not pass safety requirements then don't certify it until its corrected .
If anyone would like to start a competing aircraft manufacturing firm where profit is an after thought they are welcome to do so , with their own money .
Until then you are welcome to not certify but not tell others how to run their business.
1
Too late. The fact that he--and many others--dragged their feet in the face of 346 deaths is beyond appalling. Fingers crossed that some other company doesn't hire him. Not all that optimistic, however. These guys always seem to land on their feet. Meanwhile, the families of the passengers on the ill-fated planes are left with their grief.
1
Congress was complicit with the company in creating this quality nightmare. The law has been changed to make things even worse. Firing the CEO helps protect the rest of the gang. It will get even more dangerous to fly on a Boeing plane!!
Hopefully there will be a change of heart about the strategic direction back to the old pre-merger Boeing processes
How can a CEO be fired if he's eligible for a $39 million dollar payout? The arrogance of management can only be leveled when payouts are dismissed to home in on the severity of those dead from miscalculations in assuming MCAS would be seamlessly added on and a tablet was all that's needed to inform cockpit crew. Taking away compensation after resigning or in more dramatic fashion, firing when it means nothing when a payout is included insults the memory of those lives lost. It's no wonder the flight attendants and pilots refuse to fly the 737 MAX with its flaws now revealed, warts and all.
This shouldn't be the real story...what people want to know is how this plane got certificated to fly in the first place. Does Boeing have a lot of DC connections?
Someone made the decision to strap those engines on that airframe and then require programmers to make it fly.
1
Even if he genuinely believed it was "a game changer" when lauching it Instead of grounding this "flying coffin" right after the 1st crash he lied that it was safe blamed pilots and sold even more of this 737 Max.
Terrifying & appalling.
1
Kill 346 people. Collect $40 million.
The new version of Monopoly.
1
Great, is going to be charged with murder now? He should be.
1
No doubt he will be taken care of with a huge Golden Parachute.
Of course the 346 souls his company murdered due to greed did not have the luxury of any parachute.
America's lesson - reach the C-Suite and no matter how bad you are, wealth will follow you.
1
Boeing is run by private equity who raced to the bottom. Now the Blackstone PE guy whose mentor was Jack Welsh will finish the job. Expect Boeing follow GE.
You can bet he'll walk away with a bundle.
1
In some places the Boeing dudes would be heading for some jail time!
2
"Short-Term Thinking Is Poisoning American Business" by Ryan Beck and Amit Seru, NY Times, 22. Dec. 2019...how apropos this article was!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/opinion/sunday/capitalism-sanders-warren.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_191222?campaign_id=2&instance_id=14746&segment_id=19814&user_id=6a65c40634c9c63cdce7760c0720843e®i_id=430240141222
IMHO a good CEO needs to keep his finger on the pulse of the market, his clients and the competition, throw in a bit of foresight makes for an excellence.
The B737 was a great plane for its time, just what the market needed, the repeated upgrades and popularity are testimonies to its workman-like design. But there is a use-by-date on everything and that is Muilenburg's great faux pas. He flogged Boeing's drey horse til it died.
The design peaked with the 737 Classis, the NG bought him a bit more time to come up with a successor for the same routes and short/medium haul markets, and can take on the next generation of hi-bypass turbofans, which will only get bigger to achieve higher bypass ratio.
Muilenburg missed that opportunity, he lacked foresight and had to play catch-up with Boeing's only competitor. Also, he threw his weight around with the FAA.
2
How is it legal for CEOs or top executives like David Calhoun, the new CEO of Boeing, to engage in insider trading based on their insider knowledge of the company's developments ahead of the public's? While at Caterpillar, Calhoun actively traded his company stock based on insider executive information at a rate of 33,839 units per day. Here is a complete history of Calhoun's stock trades while he was Executive Director of the company. Also, I would like to know to what extent the President of the USA and his family and cronies are engaging in insider trading based on the USA-China trade war. Corruption at the highest levels of corporate and government within the USA.
https://wallmine.com/people/28689/david-l-calhoun
https://theweek.com/articles/872459/what-suspicious-pattern-trump-trades-really-reveals
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/the-mystery-of-the-trump-chaos-trades
2
The executives who decided to GO CHEAP and not design a new fuselage when larger engines were being added (shifting the center of gravity) need to do Hard Time. The executive bonuses need to be clawed back, the rise in stock prices needs to be clawed back. ETC.
1
Long overdue. But, replace Muilenburg with a financial engineer??? This is the same caliber of board that selected Muilenburg in the first place. While the various crises BA faces are creating a financial challenge, the root cause of the mess does not lie in finance. This company needs a CEO who has lived & breathed aviation, one who can sense where the real problems lie, one with a track record of delivering operational excellence if it is to be turned around before it is too late. Sadly, it took the board a year to take this step and then the board blows an opportunity to set the company on a course to recovery.
2
The 737 Max problem appears to be the result of systemic upper-level management policies and decisions going back nearly a decade. On his watch, Muilenburg couldn't repair the damage; his removal won't fix it either. Hard times ahead for Boeing and its suppliers.
The only way I'll set foot on a 737 Max is if the entire wing, engine nacelle and landing gear assemblies are redesigned to eliminate the aerodynamic anomalies that necessitated the MCAS software in the first place.
3
Boeing needs a year of Alan Mulally, who was actually responsible for the 777 development and saved Ford, not another Jack Welch, Shareholder Value, protégée. The old GE philosophy destroyed that Company, and was brought to Boeing after the merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Engineers need to feel empowered to speak out, not threatened into compliance.
4
"In simulator tests this month, airline pilots did not use the designated procedures during emergencies"
The very fact that they have to remember a series of designated procedures when the aircraft starts acting eccentric is itself the problem. It's the kind of thing that can be annoying on Facebook but fatal in an aircraft.
It seems like they need a big red button that returns manual control of the aircraft to the pilot without exception and without a series of specialized actions. The pilot places their hands on the controls, pushes the button, and flies the aircraft manually while the copilot or flight engineer figure out what's wrong with the menus.
Without immediate manual override, the 737 Max might not be salvageable until they make the software perfect. That's not likely to happen without years of field experience, and we already know how that went.
Up to spec is not good enough.
3
@mlbex This aircraft should be unconditionally stable, but it's not. While some ultra-high performance military aircraft are not fundamentally stable and rely on electronic control systems, such are not appropriate for a transport category aircraft. The underlying aerodynamic problems need an aerodynamic redesign. Until that happens, I'm with @mlbex and will refuse to fly on a MAX.
3
@fafield: I always got the impression that it was a good airframe, with generally good software, but when a certain sensor suite started providing incorrect information to the central controller, the procedure for correcting the flight profile was too complicated to be performed reliably by a pilot under stress. Hence the big red button that says "I'll fly the craft manually".
2
A staggering item in this article is:
"In simulator tests this month, airline pilots did not use the designated procedures during emergencies, instead relying on their own skills to handle problems."
Are the procedures manuals written in China.
5
from the Seattle Times: "According to Boeing’s proxy filing in April, Muilenburg has accrued pension benefits worth just over $12 million per year.
In addition, he’s entitled to walk away with $6.6 million in severance pay and another $32 million from various performance awards.
In April, Muilenburg already owned nearly 176,000 Boeing shares from previous stock awards, worth about $59 million at today’s share price."
Sweet.
4
There are real lessons to be learned here as it relates to health care, where many large health systems and hospitals are being run by persons with no actual medical training.
5
Don’t worry folks, I’m sure a golden parachute will save him. This isn’t really a failure as much as a learning experience that will land him safely as a CEO or board member somewhere else. Failing up is a great career move. It would have been a harsher corporate punishment to demote him.
5
Fired because he couldn't get the flawed planes flying again. Not fired because 350 people were killed by his products developed and manufactured under his leadership.
And take note - Calhoun is a financial turnaround artist, not an engineer.
6
@DisplayName: Boeing needs a brilliant aerodynamicist to work out a passive aerodynamic fix for the pitch instability issue, or all these planes will be scrap.
2
The last airplane to fly that way was the DC-7.
Chaos is the least of the Boeing crisis. Their hapless handling of the Max sends a chill down the collective spine of travelers everywhere.
4
The roots of the B737 crisis can be traced back to the 1990s when McDonnell-Douglas (MDC) management team effectively bought out Boeing with Boeing money and brought in the MDC team with the same derivative aircraft philosophy that destroyed MDC. Boeing moved away from developing new aircraft programs and sales struggled. Eventually the B787 program was launched, which was delayed for years by technical problems that consumed resources and prevented the development of a modern technology B737 replacement. The B737 Max is a derivitave aircraft of a 1960s design that the Boeing board needed to compete against the more technologically advanced A320NEO.
4
This was a surprise for me. Boeing was one of our biggest customers and insisted we provide them with perfect CAD software.
I hope everyone notes well that he was NOT fired for the decisions that killed 346 people. That is just business as usual. Collateral damage, totally acceptable. He was fired for not being able to get the PROFITS back on track quickly enough.
Is there any trace of civilized behavior left in corporate boardrooms and executive suites?
11
Boeing took a short cut, which made the plane unstable, then relied on software, rather than re-designing the plane, to fix it.
The FAA stood around with their hands in their pockets, and even Boeing engineers had no idea what that software really did.
This isn't about a CEO. This whole crisis is about a failure of government, a failure of us citizens to insist on good government, and a failure of Boeing to comprehend that complex systems need incredible oversight. Hitting the schedule doesn't matter if the plane hits the ground.
Sure replace the CEO. But that fixes nothing if we continue to place stock price over lives.
6
The 737 Max's engine are too big, and too much forward, while the plane's body is too close to the ground, no software can fix that. There is no room in the fuselage for longer legs as in the Airbus 320 family. In the 1960s, the 737 was made to be so low to the ground it could be easily loaded... A completely new plane is needed.
6
I would like to know about the compensation package he is receiving as he exits.
Lets see just how much financial risk is involved in being the CEO of a large corporation . . .
2
The board of Boeing doesn't come out of this lily white. On Friday he had their total confidence...on Sunday two days later he's fired. As a layman it's hard to escape the conclusion that this plane is so over engined it requires extraordinarily complex computerized compensatory mechanisms to deal with the aerodynamics of the Max. It's also probably reached the point where public confidence in the plane has been so undermined that its entire future has been called into question.
4
Firing was long, long overdue. Now what needs to be done is to scrap the plane he pushed in the first place. I, for one, will never fly on the Boeing 737 Max.
6
At the heart of this colossal disaster for Boeing is greed and the inexorable slide away from regulation by federal agencies.
Lest we not forget, the FAA was the LAST regulatory body to ground the 737MAX. During the last Republican administration (Bush-Cheney) the aviation industry was given wide latitude in signing off on new planes by the regulator.
Inevitably more stringent regulations, not fewer, are a safeguard not just for the flying public, but ultimately for the reputation and longevity of the company.
Reagan’s mantra that government is the problem is a broad brush that as shown here, is a blatant falsehood. The problems are greed, lies, and the inability for corporations who make public goods to police themselves in an era of increasing global competitiveness.
9
@Chesapeake
Spot on.
Boeing is a textbook example of:
1) deregulation (starting with the math and physics illiterate Reagan)
2) regulatory capture (FAA during Bush43 reign of error)
3) MBA bean counters making decisions that should ONLY be made by engineers of the knowledge, experience, and integrity of an Admiral Rickover type (yes, I was a reactor operator on submarines during Rickover's reign).
8
With echoes of the financial services meltdown, where regulators in name only were found to be asleep at the switch, and worse, Boeing's problems were compounded by a similar affliction. When human lives and well-being are at stake, regulators are supposed to protect Americans from risk and danger. Sadly, they do not.
Lax regulation of financial services ruined many lives. Lax regulation of Boeing cost many lives. There is no excuse.
The propensity for some in the ethically compromised political class to object to and fight any sort of regulation as unnecessary only adds to the problem, as does the coziness of regulated industry leaders with the regulators themselves.
If there was ever an argument to strengthen, rather than weaken government regulation of such industries, this is it. It should be a sobering moment for the nation's political leaders. Whether it ends up being so is an open question, given that so many of them are compromised. Citizens United hasn't helped.
7
Finally!!
now is the time to change the board. It has taken them more than a year to make this change, do they understand what is going on?
Slowly but surely, those in power and those with money are re-creating the "pre-french revolution" times, again. At the same time this duo is giving us one more reason why the need for a radical change is urgent, and that should not be focused on helping the millionaires and billionaires.
How can you say no to health care or college for every american, after finding out that after 15+ years, nobody knew or knows what to do in Afghanistan? just like the Boeing board of directors, wasting money and lives while dreaming of Mars. All of them are focused on greed and profits. While the rest of us die in plane crashes and wars; without access to health care, healthy food, clean water, jobs, education and a future.
7
This situation is a reflection of the entire Aviation industry as it is today. I have a job that the public hears very little about or is unknown to most. We calculate payloads and center of gravity limits for pilots.These are then used by the crews to calculate takeoff speeds and nose angle at takeoff to guarantee lift. These pilots have an almost unbearable workload especially in the passenger segment of the business. (I am surprised anyone wants to even do their job anymore). Air traffic is at way to high a level and needs to be reduced. There are hundreds of factors and decisions that affect your flight mechanical,human and natural(weather) before you fly off on your vacation or business trip. If anyone of them is not considered or something forgotten in the short time the crews or people like me have to perform these tasks the results are not going to be good.The pilots do not need the added stress of a system that has been proven not to work and has been rushed into service for financial gain. Yes you should worry before you get into an aircraft considering the way the industry is operated today. Air Travel is a safe form of transport but not at the capacity it is operating at currently.
9
The problems with the 737 Max go beyond MCAS -they start with the larger engines which led to the need to move the wings forward that then led to the need for the extra computer software that caused the crashes. And let's not forget the single sensor issue. The whole design and the plane should be scrapped. Stop trying to 'fix' the problems. Start over. Build a new jet Boeing can be proud of. There is no other way forward.
8
@mark "Build a new jet Boeing can be proud of. "
The question is, is there anyone left in the company who even knows how to do that anymore?
5
Perhaps MCAS is only representative of bigger problems at Boeing. There are reports of problems with the auto-throttle systems which extends to other Boeing planes and apparently caused the crash of a 777. There is the issue of battery fires on 787s which was "fixed" not by redesigning the batteries but by insulating them more heavily to prevent the spread of fire. And then there are stories about junk--tools and trash--left inside finished planes. These things indicate a bias toward shareholder profitability at the expense of consumer safety. And while the airlines themselves demonstrate a similar bias evidenced by vanishing inches in seat pitch and in-flight food the cost to the consumer is comfort, not safety.
There are plenty of ways to die miserably but having ten minutes or so to contemplate one's end as a plane hurtles uncontrollably back to earth is an horrendously awful way to go about it. I wish Boeing execs would think about that along with worrying about how to fatten up the bottom line.
8
The Boeing 737 Max isn't 'unconditionally stable' without MCAS. It can't fly reliably, in every way that an average pilot might fly (or try to fly) it. MCAS is designed to correct an unusual situation, one which many 737 pilots would never find themselves in. But SOME will, so it has to be there. This explains why the 737 Max had actually flown in the US for nearly a year without mishap.
Lion Air and Ethiopian didn't crash because of inherent faults in MCAS. The accidents happened because, in both cases, the sensor(s) that feed MCAS data failed - causing MCAS to do things the designers didn't intend.
Lion Air 737 Max PK-LQP had a history of recent flight control problems. These were correctly diagnosed as an Angle of Attack (AoA) sensor fault. In the early morning of the fatal crash, Lion Air ground engineers replaced the original AoA sensor with a refurbished '2nd' user unit. The maintenance records do not confirm that this was done correctly - nor do they show that it wasn't. The replacement sensor had been refurbished by a Boeing approved US company (in Miramar, Florida). That company did not do the refurbishment or calibration correctly - they lacked the required test equipment and deviated from authorised repair procedures. This company has since been stripped of its FAA accreditation. The Indonesian TSB believe that the replacement sensor was faulty when fitted.
There are also other factors around Lion Air's sensor fault. But, it's not just about MCAS.
4
One of Muilenberg’s key failures was his unwillingness to acknowledge the loss of human life caused by the 737 Max engineering defects. With the appointment of a hedge fund turnaround artist as new CEO, it seems probable that this unwillingness extends to the Boeing board of directors. From the start, the company has focused mostly on the financial costs of their mistakes. Boeing will remain a tarnished brand and not regain public trust until they have the humility to to admit the HUMAN costs of their actions.
11
While visiting his airplane building shop at the Duwamish shipyard in 1916, Boeing (William E., Founder/Owner/President/Board Chairman) saw a set of improperly sawed spruce ribs. He brushed them to the floor and walked all over them until they were broken. A frayed aileron cable caused him to remark, "I, for one, will close up shop rather than send out work of this kind.”
The last two crashes were accidents waiting to happen. And everyone in the know knew that. Instead of burnishing its reputation, Boeing has tarnished it forever by putting profits before lives. Cobbling together a complete and long overdue management overhaul is no way to run a company that's been so vital and trusted in this country and throughout the world for more than a century.
12
This is one of the results of moving the headquarters to Chicago where putting higher profit goals ahead of quality goals, excellent design and engineering, and outstanding manufacturing seem to prevail. That move was made some eight years ago.
There was a time whenever I flew on a Boeing, and there have been many in the last 50 years, that I would double-check that it was a Boeing and then rest easy for the entire flight knowing that it was a plane designed and built built to the highest standards.
Boeing has lost my trust, and I suspect it is because of a seriously flawed culture, in my opinion, caused by the move into that that environment.
6
And Donald Trump had not even appointed a new FAA Director until after the second crash. The previous one had resigned months, many months. before.
So both were neglectful. Boeing allowed Muilenburg to go on collecting millions of dollars for a long time and Trump allowed the FAA to go understaffed at the top while people were dying, while risks were being taken everyday by allowing the 737’s to fly.
Wondering how airline employees (like my family members) are feeling about all this...
8
Can't wait to see his exit compensation package. Moving forward, if negligence is involved, the pre-existing agreement should be null and void.
4
Indeed, Mr. Muilenburg has to go. He was the head of the company. But we should be careful to not think this is the end of accountability, or that it is a solution, a denoument in a terrible story. There is deep reckoning to be done about the default to "software" fixes to complex design problems instead of addressing the actual design problem. Technology is not some sort of value free enterprise unconnected to people's lives. There were an infinity of decisions all along the way of creating the fatal flaws in the 737 Max and the deaths of 346 people.
6
How do the corporations, specifically Boeing, structure their executive compensation packages? Despite the deep seated management failure, Mr. Muilenburg will receive $39 million in severance.
The same kind of corporate behavior was widely noted after the financial meltdown in 2008 when Wall Street lavished lush executive golden parachutes to those that caused the most painful economic collapse in decades.
6
I think it is a systemic problem with wrong incentives putting bonus and shareholder value above safety. This will happen in other places as it is not specific for Boeing. It is pure greed and ignorance supported by weak governance. Time to put things right profit is needed but not at any price.
5
This guy had become as toxic as that BP guy of "I want my life back."
No one would give BP a break till he was gone.
Ditto here.
But I think Boeing is making a mistake with his replacement - appointing an equity trader though a long time director.
What they need is a politician - because this has become a political football in DC. There are no technical issues to be resolved.
Everyone loves to kick Boeing today in DC because its become a political issue. They need a politician to address them - and not an equity trader.
And they are missing it big time as they have a very accomplished politician on their board.
None other than Nikki Haley - one if our best UN ambassadors.
They need her as she knows DC and she knows what to say - right thing at right time.
May be, they will still get around to it.
Nikki Haley? Trump's personal sycophant?
You've got to be kidding?
Apparently no engineering expertise or consumer safety focus is needed.
She is probably thinking about rebrandingthe plane with confederate flag livery on every fuselage, as she sits on the board.
@Neil
'BP guy'? That was Tony Hayward. A geologist by training. Also lacking in any PR ability, empathy or sense of accountability. Every time he opened his mouth, BP looked worse. It didn't help that he was so obviously not an American, either.
Most of the mistakes airlines make are not noticed by the passengers and costs can be concealed by the airline.
It’s only something tragic like a crash that draws wide notice.
Rest assured that this mismanagement was not necessarily noticed by the FAA including this failed MCAS system until it was too late.
The public’s grievance is not just with the airline. It is also with the FAA which should have caught the mistake and saved the day.
We, the public, were failed by everyone involved.
I feel so sorry for the lost passengers and their families.
11
Airlines with MAX orders should cancel them and force Boeing to redesign the jet rather than continue to tinker around the edges of an unsafe design that relies on computer jerry rigging to fly. The Boeing culture that brought the 707 and 747 to life has been desecrated. They traded excellence in aeronautical engineering for corporate greed. I had been a fan of Boeing in the past, but this has disillusioned and disgusted me.
14
"It was not immediately clear how much compensation Mr. Muilenburg would receive as he exited the company." Sorry, wrong question. It should be how much he will have to pay the company, the families of the victims, the government for months of stonewalled investigations, and the damaged suppliers and laid off workers. If ever there was a time to make an example of shredding golden parachutes once and for all, this is it.
14
I totally agree! No exit compensation for him! I’m
surprised they have not charged him with criminal
negligence.
I’ll never be a passenger on a 737 Max, period. When are they going to realize that this plane is done? I’m not flying an airline that would put me on it.
13
The Ethiopian Airlines crash has raised questions over the degree of oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Boeing’s development of the flight control system for the 737 MAX.
While these questions are valid, it’s important to note that the FAA has been mandated to give more control over to aviation organizations, including manufacturers, over the years. Two Executive Orders signed by President Donald Trump, that require the FAA to cut regulations further, may have tipped the balance by diminishing FAA authority and focusing the agency on working against its principal aim.
Bottom line, the FAA has been ordered to back off industry and is now being investigated for backing off by the same people who issued the orders.
Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13771 “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs” required that the USDOT actively identify and cut back on regulations deemed cumbersome or costly to business, and required the elimination of two or more regulations for every new regulation added. The mandate of Executive Order 13777 “Enforcing Regulatory Reform Agenda” was to start this effort immediately and to engage industry stakeholders and manufacturers “entities significantly affected by its regulations.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2019/03/18/did-trump-executive-orders-further-weaken-faa-oversight/#5af5cab03ca7
12
In his public testimony, Muilenburg said, "I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry."
Why didn't the prosecutor ask him: "Sorry for what?! For your failure to provide proper pilot training?! For your failure to correct the motor's relentless downward push, regardless of pilot's efforts to correct?! For carrying out the Boeing Board's priority to earn top dollar for its executives, not to invest in Boeing safety?!"
Muilenburg was sorry that he got nailed for his failures, & for carrying out Boeing Board's failures.
Muilenburg & the Boeing Board are Murderers.
6
Now David Calhoun is tasked with getting an unairworthy albatros, incapable of safe flight without a software band-aid called MCAS, back into the air?
Or does Calhoun have what it takes to tell Boeing's board that it is time to scrap their grounded death traps and design a new airframe?
6
How anyone could think that this guy's responses were smart or thoughtful is beyond me. He should have shut down the production line, shifted headquarters back to where it belonged. with the engineers in Seattle. Instead of wasting time with a computer fix to a physical design problem, he should have shifted resources to a re-design. No one will ever get on one of these planes again. Ever! The fact that they let this guy stay on for almost another year is pathetic. His Golden Parachute payment should go to the victims of his miserable chase of money over lives.
9
Wonder what Golden Parachute he will get?
What kind of scam is Boeing running? Is it political connectedness that keeps this corporate behemoth afloat?
Did we ever find out the real reason that the Air Force after approving Airbus for the inflight refueling service decided to renege on that contract and go with Boeing? That was a pretty sketchy move at the time. Lots of hand waving but little in the way of explanation.
Well Boeing, try this on for size. A sizeable portion of the American flying public has zero interest in ever boarding one of your 737 Max planes. Better scrap them and start fresh.
6
From the pilots I've talked with over the years, whenever they had debates in the lounge between Boeing and Airbus, the consensus was, "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going." That will likely be recast as "If it's Boeing I ain't going."
2
‘Fires’ is a valid descriptor ONLY IF ALL incentive and termination benefits are forfeited.
2
It its Boeing, we ain't going.....
They can't even get a clock to work.....
1
.......And just like other disgraced CEO's (McDonald's & Wells Fargo), He will walk away with a huge bonus. Does anyone else see the tragic irony of him getting a "Golden Parachute"
3
Meet the new head of the FAA.
3
Corporate leaders will continue to cause hundreds of deaths just to make a buck, because there’s no legal penalty for their criminal behavior. Meanwhile, our police and our courts will focus on prosecuting poor people trying to get a free subway ride. Priorities.
12
It was an enormously and obviously flawed decision to “stretch” th 737. The old DC9/MD11/717 could be stretched almost indefinitely because the engines were placed in the aft of the plane. The problem was the fuselage was too narrow - could only fit five across, and in truth the 737 was too narrow - 6 across but for the ever laterally expanding American - couldn’t keep up in comfort with the comfort new slightly wider Airbus offerings. More powerful engines meant that the planes could be stretched to push bigger planes, but because it has the engines mid ship, the simple act of stretching the plan, let alone fattening the fuselage, is not so simple. It would be more expensive to start from scratch than stretch 737 but it was vastly more practical and safer. Every engineer on the planet is trained in sound system development methodologies. Not so the people in finance and cost accounting - a lesson they are now learning the hard way.
They took a garbage cheap cut corners approach and then tried to compensate with software. Software as most engineers will tell you is a product that Is most frequently rolled out with problems. Then they built a plant in S. Carolina to build the plane. The whole thing is a huge and easily predictable debacle. Not surprised the CEO was fired. Wonder how much he made working there.
6
South Carolina was chosen for the lower wages they would have to pay versus Renton, WA.
Less money for workers = More executive compensation.
How did that work out Boeing?
1
Pray tell, what was the golden parachute for this separated employee? I would be curious to see going forward how much each of these lost souls cost Boeing today, tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. How does one sleep at night knowing decisions they made destroyed familes? God rest the souls lost, Godspeed to anyone that made these decisions.
Greed.
At the end of the day Boeing tried to shortcut the proper, and time tested, methods for developing a new series aircraft.
They tried to 'adapt' and 'improve' and existing plane, with catastrophic consequences.
One does need to be and engineer to understand that when a process seems to have a never ending trail of fix and redesign, a fixes to fixes, and more of the same that something is seriously wrong.
The engineers must have had incredible pressure put on them.
Boeing could have designed a ground up, cutting edge, innovative aircraft to command the skies for years, but they ended up with this tragic nightmare. And the problems with the 777X and 787 to top it off.
The greed quest is a truly bizarre journey.
10
NYTimes did not cover the role of private equity at Boeing including board of directors and new CEO.
Follow the money. PE = vulture capitalists.
1
Boeing said in a statement on Monday that its board “decided that a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers and all other stakeholders.” Can I assume that "all other stakeholders" includes, um, passengers?
6
It's a Christmas miracle to me that Trump hasn't rage tweeted for the FAA to re-certify the Max 8.
7
The 737 was an older model plane designed with a smaller engine. Boeing took a risk by installing a much bigger engine and it turned out to have been a mistake. Boeing was trying to offer an improved model without a long development process. But it resulted in an unsafe airplane.
5
The elephant in the room is the necessity to convince European regulators that the plane is airworthy. Don't hold your breath.
6
There is rightfully so much emotion surrounding these planes.
I have been a pilot for over 35 years. Essentially these crashes were caused by run-away elevator trim. I would think these planes could have stellar future safety records. They were most dangerous before the problem was identified.
Hopefully the new management can get back to making the MAX safe to fly again.
1
Who knows what anyone thoroughly knows in large companies.
It appears Boeing had plenty of warning that the new airplane
had severe problems, but it pushed ahead anyway.
Why Mr. Muilenburg, why ?
6
This is how the private sector handles a CEO who is no longer fulfilling the requirements of his office. And this is how the United States should handle a President who no longer fulfills his Oath of Office.
We the People should also change the manner in which we choose a President, and vet our candidates more thoroughly the way a Fortune 500 company vets its CEO candidates.
CEOs can make or break a company, and Presidents can made or break a country.
7
Someone still needs to be criminally prosecuted for releasing planes to the public like this.
5
Once public trust is gone, it's GONE.
Considering the potential enormity of this issue, they should have abandoned the Max, made it public knowledge and redesigned an entire new plane. Safety is first and last.
A technologically savy friend, experienced with matters of this type fully explained the issue to me. My reaction was immediate. I had the gift of a brilliant father, triple engineer and patent attorney for the late and equally brilliant Paul Kollsman, inventor of the barometric altimeter and Eyes for Apollo Mission. They were two peas in a pod and would never have allowed a thing like this to move forward. It was tough being the daughter of such an exacting father but it has its benefits my personal work ethic large and small.
Am also reminded of Bob Ebeling, engineer on the Challenger Mission that warned of potential issues with the "O" ring. The day he was interviewed on NPR I pulled to the side of the road to hear his sorrowful rendition of events.
In many ways, corporate ambitions have overridden common sense and in this case profitability for Boeing and a rightfully distrustful public
6
Boeing still doesn’t realize the 737 MAX will never fly again. Boeing may get FAA and other national airline safety organizations to certify the 737 Max flight worthy, but that does not mean customers will feel safe on it and will not fly on it. There will be a customer revolt. It’s time to reorganize the company. Boeing probably has 10 years of very rough sailing ahead. And when they do emerge, they will find a new player on the scene, a Chinese airplane manufacturer.
6
The Company that built the B-17, the B-29 and the B-52.
Hard to believe
8
The only approach for Boeing is to re brand and convert to cargo jets....
2
Taking ten months firing an incapable chief executive at Boeing is unthinkable in modern day business management. Boeing's board is equally guilty as chief executive Dennis A. Muilenburg.
The problem of Boeing 737 Max was not made by Muilenburg, but by his predecessor James McNerney. McNerney had procrastinated a must-made decision of the 737 replacement for five years and rushed to response Airbus' A320neo challenge with its 737 Max in 2011.
That is why Boeing's board also responsible for the disastrous 737 Max failure.
Muilenburg and the board have failed to ensure the professional engineering integrity with the design team, instead have taken a cheap approach to meet the market needs without paying attention to the safety of human lives.
Boeing business culture under Muilenburg's watch has been emphasizing profit over quality. The single angle of attack sensor to mitigate the unstable 737 Max with MCAS exemplifies the terrible business culture. A commercial fly machine without dual sensors of angle of attack for cross checking is unthinkable even to an undergraduate college student.
The challenges of wining back confidence of airlines as well as airline passengers will be a tough battle for Boeing. It takes years to recover. Boeing has to remember what happened with McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and its manufacture.
It must starts from building a solid engineering culture with high integrity at Boeing.
11
Totally redesigned new NEW 737 max!
You’ve seen this somewhere for a new car or something like that, no?
In the Age of Trump, another American icon, another American beacon of excellence is brought to ruin.
The board should have fired Muilenburg months ago. Because forget this CEO, the entire company is in crisis.
Is it my imagination, or does Muilenburg closely resemble noted Trump hammerhead Corey Lewandowski?
5
If a car company built a car whose cruise control system automatically reengages seconds after the driver taps on the brakes to override the cruise control system, everyone would recognize this as a serious design flaw.
From all the news and magazine articles I've read since the two crashes, the 737Max's MCAS system kept automatically reengaging every time the pilots intervened to correct the MCAS-induced dive. In heaven's name, did nobody in Boeing realize the folly of an automatic flight control system that persistently reengages no matter what? Do they drive cars with no cruise control?
4
@RH
Not quite that simple. MCAS 'keeps re-engaging' if it continues to see, as present, the dangerous situation which triggered it. Obviously. It keeps on going until the danger is past. It woudn't be much use otherwise.
In both fatal crashes, the underlying issue was not MCAS but the sensor that determines the presence of the dangerous situation - gone faulty.
Your cruise control analogy should be something like a gas pedal or linkage fault (one of those floor mats that gets rucked up under - at least, in my car) so that the cruise control doesn't perceive your frantic tapping.
1
The 737 Max is not airworthy -- it structurally lists upward. It's design is fatally flawed. Sadly, ironically it was the ill-conceived so-called software fix that killed all those poor souls.
4
@John
It 'dynamically' (not structurally) lists upward. That doesn't mean it's not airworthy, it means that, in flight, the aircraft needs trimming to compensate for the slightly more forward positioning of the new engines. All aircraft require trimming - as a result of the distribution of fuel in the tanks, for the configuration of passengers and so on. It's perfectly normal. Trimming is done by setting the default angle of the horizontal control surfaces - the waggly bits on wings and tail.
There is one situation, manual (non-autopilot) handling at very low speed, when the handling characteristics can catch out a pilot - particularly one not paying attention - when the aircraft's nose rises, forward speed is lost and a potential stall condition exists. To prevent this, MCAS pushes the nose down once to correct the issue and alert the pilot. MCAS repeats this action if the problem persists.
All this works fine provided that MCAS remains grounded in the real world. Sadly, faulty sensors made that system operate in a way that the MCAS designers never intended.
1
Boeing really needs to appoint a CEO who comes from the Quality division of the company. They need someone who put quality (read safety) issues above profit. If you build airplanes that are as flight worthy as anvils your short term profit margins may be pretty good, but it is not a sustainable business model.
When you read articles from the NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html) where they say Qatar Airlines wouldn't accept airplanes from the South Carolina Boeing facility because of quality issues it is frightening, The article stated that at the same time this was happening Boeing was reducing the number of quality engineers at the plant. It shows that Muilenberg put profits over safety. Muilenberg and his staff seemed willing to produce planes filled with dangerous foreign objects and unqualified parts as long as sales were brisk. And for this he gets a severance package of $32-39M? Makes me want to support Saunders or Warren.
15
This is a company that was entrusted to provide rigorously tested planes and instead chose to play Russian roulette. Three hundred forty six people were callously sacrificed to meet Boeing's financial targets. How many thousands of lives are now filled with sorrow? Senseless, needless, completely avoidable as we know now that the paper trail is emerging. This goes deeper than Boeing though, as the Times reporting has shown. It could not have happened without the complicity of the federal agencies and congress.
6
It's difficult to see Muilenberg's firing as anything other than the board's reaction to the loss in stock price. Don't cry any tears for him as he is already an incredibly wealthy man. The MCAS/737Max was designed and approved before he became Chairman and CEO so others bear at least the initial blame. Muilenberg's 'crime' was in the handling of the situation; but this should never be seen by anyone as a real attempt by Boeing to do more than to close the stable door.
3
Elsewhere here "Boeing Taps David Calhoun as C.E.O. to Stem 737 Max Crisis"
Calhoun is also a criminal. Also guilty of manslaughter.
He is looking for a multi-million$ payout.
Boeing is a huge defense contractor. OUR tax dollars are poised to contribute to Muilenburg getting a $30,000,000 payout for his crimes. Calhoun wants to get his next.
3
Long overdue. He should have been fired weeks ago.
He needs to be in prison!!!. if it was some machinist that did not perform a safety inspection of a planee correctly and it crashed they would be thrown to the gallows.
.
5
He must be breathing a sigh of relief.
1
We stockholders did not get great value in having the Boeing company board approve an annual salary of $30,000,000 (thirty million dollars!) We didn’t get ANY value. The Boeing board obviously did NOT act in a fiduciary capacity to its stockholders.
I don’t know it was the board’s incompetence or corruption that arrive at that pay package. Perhaps the board determined if he were worth 30 mill they deserved a healthy annual payment as well.
THE BOEING BOARD NEED TO BE REMOVED AND REPLACED!
10
Not impressed. The Boeing Board is as culpable as Muilenburg in the continuing problems with the 737 MAX, the obviously clumsy performance of the Stratoliner space capsule, and its scattershot dealings with the press, its customers, its unions, the FAA and Congress. Otherwise they'd have a new leadership team already in mind, not the Chairman taking the helm. The entire operation reeks of lack of planning and an inability to come to grips with Boeing's threadbare reality. Especially since it was not that long ago that Mr. Calhoun praised Muilenburg for his leadership capabilities. I have no reason to trust Calhoun's vision here in either direction, forward or back.
But the die is rolled. If nothing else, Muilenburg's public dumping should indicate that something is essentially wrong with the way Boeing wants to do business, and with the way it thinks it does business now. I doubt immensely we'll see any needed changes in the weeks and months to come, but there will likely be considerable discussion about how the 737 MAX is to come out of its self-inflicted boondoggle. I expect the difference to be what Boeing expects to make with future government contracts, and deep discounts to its customers. But make the 737 MAX safer? The training in MCAS more comprehensive? No. And without those, Boeing is spinning in the mud with bald tires. No traction, no progress, just a lot of dirt flying from the rapidly spinning wheels going nowhere.
4
And we have a culture which demands less and less regulation because it stifles competition. This would be laughable if it were not scary. Thank you R Reagan ("government is the problem") for failing to understand that many many dedicated public servants were doing their best to ensure safety and efficacy of drugs, food, planes, cars, toys, hairdressers, schoolteachers, farmers, you name it.
11
We've seen this supposed turn around genius movie a thousand times before and the ending is typically the same and yet the PR machine keeps pushing the same old story.
We'll see and if past is prologue, the ending will again be the same. A golden parachute of millions for the vanquished golden boy and no real solution(s) or positive fundamental change in our failing capitalistic corporate dystopia.
3
Boeing was an engineering company with an engineering culture. It will only succeed again if that aspect is once again made a core value. Not cost cutting, not anything else, just get back that innovative moxie. Or, it’s done.
9
A long overdue departure!!
Had it been up to Mr. Muilenberg and not the FAA, as well as other Civil Aviation Authorities around the world, the MAX 737 might have continued flying with the distinct possibility of other tragedies taking place.
Boeing would have done itself (as well as the public who flies on their planes), a huge favor had they kicked him out many months ago. If they had, they would have demonstrated to the public that they cared more about safety than they did about revenues.
Now they will have to earn the public's trust from scratch which 1- will not be easy and 2- may prove more costly than had they acted preemptively.
1
We got here because Boeing decided to try and pass this plane off as a 737 instead of what it really is...a new plane entirely.
This was done as it would have taken longer to get a new model in service rather than another 737 update. Boeing cut corners on a product they were going to depend on.
The best path for Boeing now is to designate this aircraft as a new model number and go through a new model certification process prior to flying it again. Then move on and let sleeping dogs lie. The size and placement of the engines on the fuselage dictates this plane as a new model FYI.
This plane needs highly paid software engineers, skilled cyber-security expertise, at least three of these well known often failing sensors, and all kinds of lights with exact computerized verbal instructions--ie a bit of AI, to clearly and simply aid pilots.
Then everyone flies free for 3 months at Boeing's expense.
4
Hey, a hedge fund manager from the GE/Jack Welch dynasty for the new CEO.
What could go wrong? Plenty. A new CEO who is a bean counter instead of knowledge of engineering expertise.
Boeing went wrong when they moved to their headquarters to Chicago-away from their engineering and manufacturing headquarters in the Puget Sound. When they let Alan Mullally- an engineer's leader- get away to Ford- they set up the cycle where unrealistic production goals set to satisfy the board and shareholders- governed productivity output. Then, the board hired CEOs, like Harry Stonecipher, more interested in $$$ than making sound engineering decisions.
And this is where we are today- don't expect because they have scape -goated Muilenburg that things are going to get rosy anytime soon.
Boeing needs to get back to their original mission before McDonald Douglas-- engineering high quality planes and taking care of the people who produce the planes.
The financials will follow if they keep to their mission.
With this new guy- don't expect anything soon.
15
@vwcdolphins , I thought the same thing after reading Calhoun's work history. Jack Welch mentored him at GE. This should have disqualified him right there. GE's Jack Welch turned GE into a bank. GE stopped actually making stuff. They almost went bankrupt. They still may go bankrupt because of Jack Welch.
3
I have to wonder Who were
The Mechanics Responsible
For
MAINTAINING Maintenance?
@Louretta
My Condolences to
All loved one's.
He should not be paid his huge salary and severance. He should be prosecuted for the deaths. The board should be forced to resign. They were complicit.
The FAA should be shaken up and forced to have all their process put under review and a clear definition made of what constitutes a modification to an existing design and a new design. Until the FAA can guarantee every plane produced in the USA is safe to fly, no aircraft shall be certified by them.
Travellers should refuse to fly on this plan.
Some teeth should be put into this by new laws to protect us from this occurring again.
14
The incentives within corporate America are such that these crashes, while tragic, are also predictable. As companies continue to move faster, and constantly focus on quarterly growth, mistakes (even tragic ones) are just the cost of doing business. I would guess, the former CEO will get a comfortable compensation package, and will likely crop up at another company soon enough. And, will there be any changes in the cozy relationship between Corp America and regulators that led to this tragedy? Probably not
6
Any 5 year old can answer this question; "Sweetheart, what happens with a plane that doesn't work right?" "It crashes." Perhaps a precocious 5 year old might add, "But we have to consider the stockholders."
8
@charles almon Charles,
I feel it's also very important as to Whom was Responsible for Maintenance of Them.
Don't you?
@Louretta it was not a matter of maintenance- the design of the plane was faulty.
3
Given how many poor decisions were made, I'm surprised Boeing didn't fire him earlier.
Instead of grounding the 737 max after the two plane crashes, Boeing tried to keep it in use to make more profits at the costs of people's lives. What a shame.
6
Finally... he is a disgrace
8
I said it before, and again say, that Boeing screwed it up so bad that they had to keep going back to this god awful guy for leadership. Muilenburg's so called apology was so horrendous that I cringed every time he said he felt sorry, because it was so obvious that he did not. His body language and actions (or non-actions) betrayed all his pretension. And Boeing tried to ride on his performance. Shameful.
6
He walks away with his golden parachute, soon to serve as CEO and Board member of other corporations. No consequences for these malignant sociopaths occupying the C-suites, Wall Street, and Oval Office...
15
It is not enough that Muilenburg is fired. He should be fined for the amount of his entire assets and he should serve a long prison sentence. Other senior Boeing executives should be treated the same way.
As detailed in a recent The Atlantic article, Boeing has been changed from its successful engineering culture to a business culture. Boeing HQ was moved from Seattle to Chicago. Other critical elements for Boeing are in Miami and in South Carolina in moves calculated to save money.
Boeing needs as CEO an engineer with a proven career in engineering and safety. An executive who can restore the Boeing Engineerings culture and that returns critical elements of the Boeing design process including the HQ back to Seattle.
16
When the Challenger blew up, NASA brought in a team of scientists, engineers, including people like Richard Feynman and Neil Armstrong to investigate the causes and determine the fixes. The report was called the Rogers Commission Report.
The MCAS system is clearly a bandaid. Is there a longer term fix with redundancy backup systems? I don't want to fly in the 737 Max 8 if there is no proven back up systems in place to prevent another accident.
To prove the MCAS system safety, I want all Board Members of Boeing and their families to be flying the first twenty flights when it is certified for service again.
8
Well that was a surprise...NOT
Now that politicians and the media have gotten their required pound of flesh maybe the company can move on with what it does best build planes. The fact is the plane has been airworthy for mths.time for someone to get them up in the air.
2
If Boeing wants to survive the next 100 years, it needs to forget about its stock price for the next few years and focus completely on safety and rebuilding that completely shattered trust. Financial recovery will follow a recovery in values and character.
15
The American theme: Whistleblowers, disasters, hearings, fired.
6
...And a nice soft comfy landing for Muilenburg via his golden parachute. His arrogance before Congress typified the position of most of these "Captains of Industry"; We own you guys (the Congress) so who are you to put us on the carpet ?
9
“It was not immediately clear how much compensation Mr. Muilenburg would receive as he exited the company.”
In the spirit of “full transparency “, I hope Boeing announces that not only will Mr. Muhlenberg receive no compensation having been dismissed for cause, but that Mr. Muhlenberg will be required to return the compensation (including stock options and restricted stock) he received over the last two years, and that Boeing will pursue legal action to enforce this action.
That would be a start to remedying the disaster he has mismanaged for quite some time.
9
Finally! I can’t understand why this didn’t happen months ago. He got what he deserved.
5
Wonder what his exit package is? Anybody know?
1
$39 million, completely unacceptable. He will never learn his lesson.
The Boeing Board re-arranges the deck chairs on the 737 MAX Titanic.
7
The board needs to be fired too for allowing them to keep this CEO in place for so long and ignoring their responsibilities. Boeing will forever be a case study of the ills of short term profits and stock buy backs versus R&D spending. Wall Street investors are as much to blame.
8
Good first step, but do not use him as a scapegoat to distract the public. Discontinue the MAX 737 and no lifting of the grounding orders.
6
It is incredibly complex to design a jetliner and take into consideration all possible scenarios. A large effort goes into making up for inevitable human error.
Boeing has designed hundreds of plane a and variants and manufactured many thousands and have a safety record that is so good that we are shocked when there is a failure.
If you are expecting zero risk, don’t fly. It’s impossible.
3
My first thought:
It’s about time.
My second thought:
What about the board?
Why should ANYONE on the board not lose theirs as well?
7
As a retired Instrumentation Engineer in the space program, the idea of dedication to no shortcuts taken comes down from the top of an organization, in my case NASA at AJ where I worked on the Apollo program. It was a sense of duty to follow the lead of management, and to challenge it when it seemed to be needed. One of my fellow engineers, Jack W. a Physics major had to put his reputation on the line when he noticed instability in the Apollo trans-lunar injection engine. Change in the chamber pressure transducers was needed to ones that would respond to the chamber pressure untoward variations. After he insisted that the needed changes were instituted, the first test afterwards clearly showed instability which had been doubted by the manufacturer's engineers. The instability had apparently been the cause of multiple engine explosions after 20-30 repeated tests by our engineers. S G quickly corrected the problem by changes of the fuel injector of the engine. It took Jack's insistence to make the engine safe enough for manned flight in the program, where it could have been a disaster to have one of these engines malfunction.
After the crash of the first of these doomed Boeing planes, I read of the lack of redundancy in the stall system sensors (only one was used- no back up) which violates instrumentation standard practice and was obvious as a failure of rigorous oversight. The this can be traced to the chain of command and that starts at the top, doesn't it?
16
The stage was already set when Dennis Muilenburg became CEO.
The real culprits are former CEO Jim McNerney and Ray Conner
They are the ones that pushed system Certifications thru the FAA
How come they have not been called to testify before Congress?
How come the media has not asked McNerney and Conner to explain?
18
How many tens of millions of dollars will this man, who allowed an unsafe plane into service killing hundreds in 2 crashes, walk away with in severance? American inequality at it’s WORST!
12
@ManhattanWilliam I've clearly messed up enough that I cannot be in a position to fail upwards so well....
All that corner-cutting was supposed to save Boeing money. How’d that work out for them...?
10
So... can we stop blaming 3rd World pilots now?
21
These are just a few in-depth reporting by Seattle Times whose reporters have not left any stone unturned. The scandal is so far reaching and obviously deadly.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lack-of-redundancies-on-737-max-system-has-baffled-even-those-who-worked-on-the-jet/
https://projects.seattletimes.com/2019/boeing-737-max-12-problems/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-pushed-faa-to-arelax-737-max-certification-requirements-for-crew-alerts/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-emergency-procedure-for-737-max-may-have-failed-on-ethiopian-flight/
8
The news says: “Boeing fires CEO Dennis A. Muilenburg” Is this enough? No!
2
Three Hundred and Forty Six Souls Lost ... Yet Muilenberg rushes to put the death jets back in service... Where does this mind set come from; money money money ... smdh
113
@Lea Guillotine I can believe he didn’t at first know how flawed his jets were. But after Lion Air he knew. He had it in his power to take action that would ultimately have saved lives lost in the second crash; he put profits above safety and chose not to. And even after the second crash, he tried to get Trump to stop the planes from being grounded. For all this and more, he walks away with $39 million.
15
@Michael He should donate that money to the victims' families. But of course....he will be smiling all the way to the bank.
11
@Michael He could not care less. A pillar of the MBA curriculum is the profit triangle. Nothing and/or no one (living or dead) must be allowed to sully this modern day golden calf. In our present sad state of affiars, empathy and grief are considered serious liabilities, glaring flaws for any prospective CEO. By this time next week, Muilenburg will be sunning himself in the Caribbean while he checks his stock portfolio and buffs his resume.
7
I have known many CEOs and many of them can best be described as opportunists and politicians who do not know their markets, customers or products. Their CFOs are more likely to be lawyers than CPAs. The level of functional disconnect at the top levels of business and industry is appalling.
11
Too bad, Mulley was sure expecting his year end annual bonus.
Too bad, the rest of us will have no choice in riding The Boeing 737 Death Max Jet.
Don't worry, he will be safely riding in his private jet.
9
Private jet not made by Boeing while using that money to invest in more vulture capitalism. It’s an epidemic.
1
He made over $23 million dollars last year. His severance package should make most people blush. So much for "failing" in corporate America.
14
In a sane society there would have been criminal prosecution of the responsible managers. If Martha Stuart went to prison, these guys should do ten times over.
14
I hope the 30-plus million dollar severance package eases his burden of responsibility for 300 dead passengers.
5
Boeing is classic Boomerism. In its all out pursuit of capitalism these leaders have managed to mangle a top engineering company. Of course Muilenberg gets replaced by a true Boomer. Good luck with that. OK, Boomer!
3
@Owen it has nothing to do with generational differences. If anything Millennials and their ilk are worse in doing anything for a dollar.
2
ON a personal level, one wonders how Mr. Muilenburg is able to live with himself, knowing that Boeing designed planes which he allowed to go up, fly, knowing of the possibility of a fatal crash, which happened twice, well, w/o sounding too pedestrian, to quote Zelda Fitzgerald, we pay a price for everything in life, and personally I do not envy any of the executives at Boeing who knew about the defect, but in the name of profit, allowed the defective planes to fly!Muilenberg well might be the "bouc emissaire,"taking the blame for others, but he still has to live with himself, and with the knowledge that if he had lodged a public protest, both crashes would not have occurred and victims in both tragic flights would still be alive today!
5
All those zeroes at the end of his pay check easily makes up for that guilty conscience.
2
@Sipa111 :No, hunch is they will not in the long run.When you DELIBERATELY do a bad thing, it eventually comes back to bite you. Conscience is a funny thing, and over a period of time he will, my hunch ,begin to be haunted by the idea that he sacrificed hundreds of lives for the sake of the company's profit,the "esprit de corps"of his fellow Boeing executives. That is the way many corporate executives think, unfortunately. How many cars have been put on the road despite the car makers' knowing that there were safety problems, yet the bottom line comes first.I believe in cause and effect in a spiritual sense.Much to be said for living the good life, for integrity,caring for others beginning with one's family, neighbors. When you deviate from that norm, you will sooner or later pay the price.
As an engineer now in senior management, Muilenburg forgot where he started...
what is the saying... we all rise to our own level of incompetence.
Long overdue
8
BUT ... will he loose his golf club priviliges ?
1
What took so long? This man and Boeing represent much of what is wrong with our current form of capitalism, short term thinking, immediate profits, disregard for the safety or integrity of their product so long as it is profitable.and any fallout that can be contained by spin and manipulating government politicians and agencies. The hubris of these CEO oligarchs boggles the reasonable mind .But this story isn't any different than Perdue Pharmacy and the Sacklers, Johnson and Johnson or the too big to fail Wall Street banks. Not only do we need better regulation but we need to start putting many of these people in jail for fraud and in some cases murder. Without significant prison time they pay a fine, still have their millions or billions and wash their hands and walk away fat cats. Just look at Michael Milken or better yet Donald Trump.
11
I will still be safe and comfortable flying on any Boeing airplane ... except the Max8.
The triple-7 is the queen of the sky. Two engines and goes anywhere, globally. My personal fav.
Boeing simply got too big and out grew its pants. I wonder what Glen Curtiss might have to say.
2
Many readers focus on mr Muilenberg and his fully supportive Board. The disconnects and failings were happening all over the place, mostly away from their direct supervision:cozy on going relationships with the FAA, pilots and engineers refraining from making strong objections,massaging the message, a completely out of control chain of 8000 suppliers, foolish years long pursuits of legal actions against the minuscule Bombardier company, lengthy take over talks in Brazil for a piece of Embraer....
No surprise then that the essential fact escaped their attention: I remember reading in this news paper,the comments of an engineer explaining that in its rush to make a new airplane,Boeing took an old model and outfitted it with more powerful engines , then realizing it could pose problems,produced this piece of software to automatically take over from pilots ,except most pilots were not trained to handle it nor in some cases were they even aware of its functions.
I am caricaturing what I understood,not being versed in this field,but if this is what the Max is about, how on earth will it ever be safe to fly.
Better go back to the drawing board and make a fantastic new king of the sky.Trying to rehab the Max will always look like a cheap,hurried patched up job.
8
@Marcelo Brito Absolutely right on.
1
The whole saga is a metaphor for our country. We are crashing, baby. With money as our idol we will be expelled from existence.
8
There has been a serious lack of leadership at Boeing for a long time. The have destroyed probably one of the most respected Companies in the World.
This Guy is going to walk away with million of dollars and stock options!
2
As a part of compliance, and as he knowingly put the profits before the safety and lives of the innocent passengers, he should be incarcerated. Instead I am sure he might be getting a golden parachute!
I am sure common shareholders will punish BA and reward Airbus for the time to come.
Corporate compliance should be tightened after these accidents, not in the Games Industry, but everywhere public safety is at stake!
Good riddance and these mistakes better not be repeated by another global corporation.
2
Did Muilenberg not think to call all this "fake news?" Or does that only work for Trump?
2
All the board should go, too.
In their bio's basically none of them could be expected to master the sutlety and comlexity, and latency, of of such large high tech systems with such huge numbers of parts, components, software and systems working together. Really, all of that requires long experience to see how these problems emerge with low frequency of occurence. And typically, more than one critical element is involved, almost like an invisible and RANDOM cospirancy where perhaps a small piece of it is actually observed, but not itself warranting qick repair. Do city folks understand how corn grows by looking at the final crop, where only a very small percentage failed to mature properly or died along the way? We don't worry much about that because an ear of good corn is not valued as much as an airplane full of people.
An example of the board is Caroline Kennedy, like most witHout the necessary experience. One board member, a retierd Navy Admiral might know a bit about completed aircraft but is exremely unlikey to know these manufacturing details. Ships can fix almost any thing at sea!
And the shareholders? Out of the multitudes perhaps a very few might understand the matter, a few voices in the wilderness.
So fire and reconstruct the board and build a complementary board team that balances ALL the important issues. And consider that just ONE board member can turn the tide, forcing the CEO to consider. He AND board member will have expert resources to help them.
3
Boeing needs a CEO who is ready to say "We have lost our way, lost our focus on engineering and building the best product possible. Instead, we focused on gaming the regulatory system and relied on lobbying and the courts to fend off the competition. My first task is to return Boeing to the business of world class product design and manufacturing and turn away from the dead end path of rent seeking."
6
@RH - the 737 max is one of the greatest rollouts in history. the uptake by customers was huge.
are you really saying they gamed the system. and don't have great product design?
stop taking your cues from R. Nader.
@Alan Yes, I am saying that Boeing gamed the system with the 737Max. Using intrusive software to hide the Max's aerodynamic 'quirks' (due to engines that are too big and powerful for the airframe) so that the Max mimics the behavior of the previous 737s and thus avoids additional pilot training expenses. That's gaming the system.
Beyond the 737Max: petitioning the US government to levy excessive tariffs on the Bombardier CS because they don't have a competitive product. Yes, that's gaming the system. Thank God the courts knew better and the legal maneuvering backfired on Boeing.
737 Max is the greatest rollout? Yes, if your goal is to McGyver a 50 year old airframe to evade true regulatory scrutiny. No, if your goal is to build the best (safest, most efficient, etc.) plane you can in that airliner segment.
Yes, the uptake by customers (the airlines) was huge. That just means it's the greatest rollout ever of a flawed product.
Let's go back to the basic flaw. This is a plane whose engine is too large and powerful for the airframe thus necessitating automatic software corrections to hide the flaws. On top of that, aside from having no redundancy on a key safety-critical sensor, the software is programmed to reengage automatically and constantly every time the pilot intervenes. Imagine a cruise control system that always reengages by itself seconds after you tap on the brakes. How dumb is that?
2
It amazes me how quickly we are to judge when things go wrong. Muilenburg can’t win regardless of his credentials. The people who should be fired are those who took shortcuts. Furthermore, more blame than has been discussed is the shoddy pilot training in Indonesia and Kenya. I will be far more likely to fly a Max flown by a reputable airline than I will to fly ANY Indonesian or Kenyan airline.
2
So firstly, there was no Kenyan airline involved. The Ethiopian airline has one of the best reputations in the world and if you actually read any of the articles, you would know that Boeing did not inform anyone of those change. Even their main test pilot could not control the plane in a simulator and he knew what to expect.
4
Why does every news report continue including the death toll, especially during the holidays. Does the Times really believe grieving families and saddened Boeing workers need reminding?
It would be great if as much attention would be placed on automobile safety as automobiles killed over 35,000 people in 2018 in the US alone. Who's taking responsibility for that?
The average Boeing worker will take the brunt of economic losses suffered by the grounding of the 737 MAX, not those whose decisions caused the crashes. Once returned to service, Boeing and Airbus planes will continue to provide the safest means of travel available to the public.
2
@Dean - right on. It's amazing how un-informed people are on this comment section. Stop taking your cues from Nader.
>>> "Does the Times really believe grieving families and saddened Boeing workers need reminding?"
Grieving families need to hear that progress is being made to ensure that the sloppiness that killed their loved ones will not kill others in the months and years ahead.
And Boeing workers and executives need every possible reminder, to encourage them to make sure it doesn't happen again.
6
If corporations are people isn’t Boeing guilty of murder?
12
@Gene
I must have missed that trial or investigation that blamed both crashes solely on Boeing. Maybe you could post a link to that.
He should be in jail. And who in the world would ever step in a 737 MAX again.
5
No criminal charges for negligence related to the two fatal jet crashes?
4
How much was his golden parachute?
4
Let's remember this Muilenburg is just the latest of the bad actors in Boeing's executive suite. Recently, we've seen Stonecipher (affair with subordinate), Condit (t)enure marked by criminal conduct of subordinates), and the real villain of the 737MAX affair, Jim McNerney.
Mc Nerney, a finance guy, hired as CEO without any aviation background, drove the outsourcing of work (and profit) and made the decision to develop the 737MAX instead of a new aircraft.
Things at the Lazy B haven't been the same since Allen, Wilson, and Shrontz. David Calhoun, another bean counter, will continue the decline.
9
This is symptomatic of what is wrong with America. The Industrial-Wall Street-Trump complex kept this charade going for over a year with Dennis Muilenberg playing the role of the useful puppet, propping up the stock price with false assurances, until they finally had no use for him. So he became road kill. I don’t have a problem with that, I have a problem with the perpetrator.
Meanwhile over three hundred (non-American) lives were lost while Mammon was propitiated.
6
Boeing’s statement that it pledges to repair relations with its regulators is extremely concerning. Boeing and the regulators should not work hand in hand, but should act as a check on each other.
8
they should scrap the 737 and start again.
4
It must be nice to be a CEO. You can literally kill hundreds of people and then walk away with $30 or $40 million in severance and an $11 million pension.
14
Boeing finally got rid of their CEO, but that hasn't changed the company culture. The cutting corners to face the challenge from Airbus, the lobbying efforts to block sales of Airbus rather than investing the time in building better aircraft properly rather than trying to tweak a 40 year old aircraft design. The pressuring of weakening government regulation to make the FAA a toothless tiger hasn't gone away. The current administration hasn't acknowledged the need for stronger regulation and better separation between regulators and industry experts. The FAA hasn't been given the clear independence and executive mandate it needs to ensure aircraft safety over everything else (including profit!).
Leadership to do the right thing rather than the profitable thing is still lacking in the industry and the government. This is what happens when government is run by bean counters rather than by principles and ethics to the betterment of mankind.
6
Is there potential criminal liability here? Involuntary manslaughter, perhaps? Perhaps not; just curious.
3
This move to fire Muilenberg is long overdue and should have occurred a year ago. There was no way Muilenberg was going to fix Boeing because he was part of the culture of Wall Street profits over safety that caused the 737 Max mess to begin with. The Boeing boardroom must have hoped he could somehow rescue the company and turn around the Boeing stock price back to where it was with more of the same. That was a grave error in judgement and the Boeing board should be replaced too. Time for someone with technical savvy uncorrupted by Wall Street greed to come in and right the ship. I am not confident there is anyone left at Boeing who can take the reigns and do that.
3
Boeing: American capitalism at its greediest and finest—
Aided by compromised government agencies.
3
If it weren’t for Boeing’s lobbying machine in DC, they would’ve even lost their military contracts the US military was forced to choose Boeing over airbus. The reality is Boeing’s quality has been questionable for years. This is what happens when an industry is given near monopoly status and left unregulated. The sad part is, most likely the American tax payer will end up footing the bill when Boeing eventually has to file for bankruptcy under its current and future obligations, the number of airlines and the dollars involved in these disastrous situations is staggering and will most likely approach tens of billions of dollars and Boeing’s liability and obligations at this point will far outpace the profitability of any of their current commercial jet programs. They deserve it, the 60 years old 737 line should’ve been retired by now, replaced by a blank slate aircraft. Their lobbying of the government which limited oversight by a substantial amount will now come to haunt them and the American tax payer and aviation industry for decades to come.
6
Some discussion appeared in the media recently about Nikki Haley being a possible running mate for Trump. She'd get the Republican women in suburbs to vote for the ticket, was the logic. She's on the Board at Boeing. Why is a good question. Perhaps it has to do with Boeing's latest factory built in SC where she was governor. Were she to run, she'd need to explain why she and the others allowed Muilenburg to remain on the job so long.
8
When I look at Boeing's current commercial plane lineup, the only competitive equipment is the 787 (against the Airbus 350). They're not going back to making the earlier 737, and airlines are going to choose an Airbus over the 737 MAX because of customer concerns. Thousands of Boeing employees are going to lose their jobs, and their stockholders are going to be hit with financial losses.
To me, it looks as if the future for Boeing will be dominated by their military business. Time for them to hire some generals and lobbyists to set up in Arlington, Virginia.
5
What are Caroline Kennedy and Nikki Haley doing on the board of Boeing? Do these persons have experience with aeronautical engineering? No. They are celebrities. Even on the board of a highly technical company: celebrities. They have invaded everything. They are useful as symbols but they can be a disaster in the real world. And there is something fake about them. So, look at Boeing, with this board that led the company into disaster, deciding in 2011 to build an airplane that cannot fly safely, that needs a precarious "fix", that has faulty aeronautics, that is now 52 years old. To boot, the MAX appears to have been to some extent badly built, and an airplane cannot withstand that. And there sit Ms. Kennedy and Ms. Haley, on the board of an emblematic American company that has now met its nemesis: itself. Boeing is self-destructing; and possibly this is a parable for industry in the United States to ponder. What have been the human mistakes and deficiencies that led Boeing to this pass? What are the factors in the society and the culture and the economy that produced those mistakes and deficiencies? Meanwhile, shouldn't the shareholders insist on a board that knows airplanes, and knows the business of airplanes? A well as having the integrity and intelligence that these women surely have.
17
Baffling that it took this long to fire him. He clearly turned a blind eye to safety and processes during the design stage of the 737 Max but then it took him ages to acknowledge that there could actually be a connection between un-announced, core product changes and the deadly incidents. He should have been fired months ago for his dishonest or plain incompetent leadership.
7
There's the Max but I'm focused on the space launch. Boeing couldn't even get the clock timed correctly? This means there is something terribly wrong at this company.
7
Presumably his golden parachute is in good working order. Anybody know how big it is?
6
American justice. A guy sells untaxed cigarettes on a streetcorner. Dead from a chokehold. Another guy responsible for the death of over 300 people because of company greed and shareholder fielty walks away having already been given $70 million salary. And punishment? Forfeit severanace pay? A smaller than normal severance package? Where’s the arrest? Where’s the trial?
23
I notice Nimrata Haley has managed to get her fingers into the pie. She should be the first board member to resign.
7
Boeing hasn't suffered that much for its sins on Wall Street. Although its stock is more than 20 percent off the all-time high in March (amid a fast-rising DJIA), it's still up 210% over its five-year low in 2016. To be clear, I'm not defending the company. I agree with many of the harshest comments on the NYT pick thread. Wow, they're brutal! And so was the negligence of Muilenberg and the board.
3
Speaking of things that require Air Flow they both chase Windmills and answer to the name
Don .
Who are they ?
3
Omitted in the story is the seperation package Muilenberg will recieve as compensation for wrecking an American industrial crown jewel.
I'm sure he will donate whatever it is to the thousands who will be unemployed as a result
3
He should have been fired a long time ago, before over 300 people perished on HIS quest to maximize HIS pay package. He KNEW MCAS was problematic but decided to "hide" it as a minor enhancement not even worthy of any planned non-simulator training for pilots. How much would it have cost Boeing to install TWO MCAS sensors so as to have a backup which was the in-house recommendation? To have such as a critical command-n-control sensor with no backup is NEGLIGENCE. When over 300 are dead, it is CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE. How much $$$ did Boeing lobby to get the FAA in bed to allow Boeing, THE MANUFACTURER (!!), to certify its own product?
This is ONE product, an airplane, where there is hardly any margin of error, where lives can and have been lost, and yet we want LESS REGULATION?? Are we NUTS??
3
And all his lieutenants involved in the 737 Max 8 need to go with him.
2
I only wonder why it took so long.
2
In my opinion, the main cause of these two accidents was the activation of the stick shaker which normally would indicate the aircraft was slowing to stall speed when in actuality it was accelerating to an extremely high airspeed because the engines were left at takeoff power and the software was lowering the nose and causing the aircraft to stop climbing and start a descent.
The stick shaker completely disoriented these two crews and caused them to panic and not correctly analyze their problem.
I spent 35 years as an airline pilot and never experienced a stick shaker activation in flight. On the other hand, every time I was training in the simulator I was reacting to a stick shaker telling me that my airspeed was dangerously low, and I needed to add full power to get out of this condition.
In the 2009 Colgan Air crash the NTSB determined the probable cause was the captain's inappropriate response to the stick shaker. In that case the aircraft was actually slowing to stall speed and he panicked and pulled back on the yoke before he added power and increased his airspeed.
With the AI capability we have today wouldn't it be better to have a calm woman's voice prompt the crew on the correct actions they should take. "Reduce power and airspeed ", "shut off stabilizer trim" or "lower nose increase power and airspeed".
The stick shaker is very loud and distracts the pilot when he needs to be calmly diagnosing his problem.
3
As I understand it, the reason corporations have "Corporate Seals" is that, there is no way for the artificial "corporate person" to sign a document with a pen.
What should be done, is to lock up Boeing's corporate seal. If a non-corporate person can be sent to jail, then it should be possible to jail the corporate seal, since we are told that corporations are the equivalents of "persons".
2
The board have to go. They fail to realise the quickest way back from the crisis both in time, risk and financially is full cooperation and transparency at a time when trust and goodwill has been destroyed. Pressuring the FAA to certify, whilst still not having final software in place, documentation and a defined training program is reprehensible and simply repeating the same corporate culture that got them here in the first place. I bet they are trying everything on their new software to avoid the requirements of pilots having to retrain to fly the Max. Has anyone asked the question internally and to the board that in the current situation this in fact may be the best path even financially to take to gain recertification, restore trust of both pilots , airlines and the public ? That's the current cultural dilemma in a nutshell.
4
As an EU citizen I want Airbus to be competitive against Boeing because it is - or was - one of the greatest engieneering Companys in the World.
But this is no way to win. We want to win by building better planes, not by Boeing building scrap planes. Boeing used to build outstanding planes, so please - be once again an engieneering company.
5
I don't understand why not only he, but possibly some of the board and whoever else passed that system through, should not be prosecuted for the crime of murder.
Is it because that would be in bad taste--beyond the pale?
Or won't the laws support that? And if not, we need some laws that will and a state/fed that will not settle.
That's one way to start taking back the country.
7
Let’s get back to nuts and bolts realities - there should be rock star engineers on the Board of Boeing rather than accountants & politicians like Nikki Haley.
16
He should be going to jail! CEOs make decisions that kill. They should be held responsible criminally....jail.
This was no act of simple negligence. He reportedly knew the planes were unsafe . There had been two crashes when he allegedly call the President to hold back the grounding of these dangerous planes.
5
Many, many failures here and tragedy ensures.
1) Boeing (I specifically include the board here) failed when they lost track of what they make, safety for travel, not just aluminum tubes to put people in and fly around the world in. a) They pushed to maintain the same training for the aircraft, although the addition of MCAS is clearly something that needed more training. b) they outsourced and offshored so much of the aircraft design and manufacture that I suspect they don't fully understand the plane's software. c) allowing a single data source to control the pitch of the plane in certain situations. d) moving the HQ to Chicago never made sense and increased the ability to assume away problems or treat everything as a PowerPoint presentation that could easily be solved. e) the board looks to be about 1/2 technical and the rest not having much experience with building things or running airlines.
2) Regulatory capture of the FAA, resulting in not needed rigorous certification of the 737MAX even though the plane in no way looks the same as the original 737. In addition cockpit resource management reviews in these complex airplanes seems to have been minimized.
3) Corrupt local air safety regulation that tolerates minimal training and inept or incompetent maintenance practices. It's no surprise that both airlines that had crashes are 3rd world airlines with not stellar maintenance practices and minimal training.
This will take years to fix.
8
If Boeing asks for a bailout from the government to cover the costs I say the whole company should be nationalized and the entire value of the stock wiped out. Only then will corporate America get the message.
8
Boeing’s handling of the 737 Max crisis will be studied for years for its shear ineptitude.
When we step onto a plane, we trust that the engineers designed it properly, the workers built it correctly, the airline maintained it to standard, the pilots are well trained and ready to fly, and that ATC functions with the highest regard for our safety for once that door closes, everything is out of our control. Our very lives depend on that.
For decades, Boeing engineers designed superb airplanes. I routinely told my wife that I had full trust in Boeing’s engineers. I can no longer say that.
Besides Muilenberg, the board needs to be revamped. If we’re going to question Hunter Biden’s value to Burisma, let’s also ask what Nikki Haley and Caroline Kennedy bring to the table for Boeing. Does either have an idea about what it takes to design and build safe, world class airplanes?
10
@Quinn Agreed. I still trust the engineers, just not the people who sign their checks.
2
How does someone like Muilenberg get selected to head Boeing in the first place, if they are not a good communicator? Wouldn't that be the single most essential skill for such a CEO? Aren't we repeatedly told by corporations that they justify the megabucks salaries because the needed talent is so scarce?
Anyway, what are the Las Vegas odds on how large Muilenberg's golden parachute will be?
3
Corporate sector in US and other countries has a problem. And like so many such problems is also infected with the knowledge that they don't have a problem.
The government, being now small enough to be drowned in the bathtub, is being drowned in the bathtub by the sector strong enough to do the deed: the corporate sector.
Government of, by, and for the people has indeed perished, in Lincoln's words, because the Congress is no longer the place where the People's business is transacted. Business's business is done there: ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce are not only writing the rules, they're appointing the rule makers in the money primaries that precede the voting primaries.
Until we have publicly financed elections at the state and federal level, the money folks (aka the 1%) will continue to drown the people's government in the bathtub.
The people who believe government is the problem are in charge of the government and doing their best. That best is to tilt the playing field so all the money falls into their pockets. They are doing exceptionally well and the corporate sector is in record profit and record cash holdings levels. Nobody need be surprised at that or at the results. The 737 MAX is just one example of the rot.
Greed is not good. Greed is pathological. These people worship only money.
3
How big is his parting gift? How many millions of dollars will he walk away with? We need to never lose sight of the real incentives at work here. How much has the company gifted him in honor of his embarrassing, public, deadly failure as a leader?
Unless the answer is a flat zero, this does nothing to increase my confidence in Boeing.
7
He fully deserves this but, for him, this should hardly be the end of it. This man has got blood on his hands. The victims and their grieving families deserve justice, which will only be served by a criminal trial.
5
I guess he will have to sell his house and get food stamps, right
4
NY Times presciently pointed out that the disaster began when Boeing split management from engineering, making the managers focus on profits instead of safety. The most obvious failing was the fact that they built an aircraft with two angle of attack sensors but no angle of attack indicator, unless the customer paid an exorbitant amount to activate a bit of software. If they had provided the AOA indicator on all aircraft and some appropriate training they would not have needed the MCAS.
7
It is worth remembering that the FAA is also in damage control over this issue. The FAA were the last global regulator to ground the 737 MAX. Subsequent revelations appear to suggest that the FAA has been a victim of regulatory capture by Boeing. News this week of Mr Muilenburg's demands that the FAA certify the plane quickly does not help refute this impression. What the FAA absolutely cannot have occur is for it to certify the 737 MAX as safe and for other global regulators to continue to refuse to certify the plane. The FAA was considered a global leader on aircraft safety, but that reputation would rightly seem to be in peril as questions arise as to whether the organisation places passenger safety or Boeing's profits first.
6
Don't forget all Muilenberg types who work in industries where the body count stacks up in less spectacular ways or in which it takes a little more imagination to see how the greed might impact us, The Sackler's or water in Flint, for instance. As long as shareholders set the rules, the rest of us our fodder for profiteering.
3
The way Boeing marketed the 737-Max was criminally negligent, essentially camouflaging MCAS to avoid having to pass on the cost of pilot training instead of emphasizing the crucial working details needed to ensure safety. And the system was triggered in most cases by a single sensor. In light of such warnings given by pilots familiar with the system, and the company’s reluctance to divulge information, Muilenburg deserves far more retribution than just being fired.
2
My family worked at Boeing in Seattle for generations. We worked our hearts out to make sure they were safe. We ran and re-ran safety test 20 times and still lost sleep that somewhere, somehow we may have overlooked something. It was a kind of constant worry but also a source of pride.
When those planes went down it felt like getting knocked down from a gut punch, but the feeling soon gave way to shock and disbelief to see Boeing's current management respond with such dishonesty and selfishness. I am aghast that they would respond with pretty lies when they knew the only right course of action was ugly truth. I grieve for what was lost at the altar of short term profit and corporate greed.
25
If their other board members have the same inexperience as Nikki Haley then don't be surprised when planes can't fly.
8
Two sentiments come to mind: Well it’s about time! and too little, too late (to save this once great company). I’ll never look at Boeing the same way again. The trust is gone.
The CEO and their Board are criminally liable, if you ask me. The system continually fails to hold executive leaders accountable. Recall all those bank CEOs who weren’t even charged let alone tried and convicted. They killed people too by collapsing the global economy.
The free world has lost its way, I’m afraid.
7
Very kind of them to wait until the Christmas Holidays.
1
Golden parachute deploys in 3..2..1..
4
Boeing should never moved their HG from Seattle.
2
Under Dennis' management with all the lives that were lost and/or ruined, he should wear his golden parachute after the unemployed Boeing workers strap him in a Starliner 737 Max with autopilot turned on for his trip home. A classic case of profits over life. Good riddance,
2
Why is there no mention of the unsheilded rudder cables that are vulnerable to be cut off if an engine turbine blade breaks off? These are new engines with no track record of reliability. in the past Boeing used titanium tubes to shield these cables in line with the engines but these tubes were eliminated to cut cost. I thought the new Boeing put safety first. Now all that everybody writes about is the MCAS. Will the readers of NY Times put their children on the MAX with no shields on these cables?
3
@Fed Up
Please do us all a favour and report the issue with the unshielded rudder cables to the FAA.
1
Until Jim McNerney took over as CEO in 2005, Boeing was to WA STATE what the film industry is to Hollywood. It was a community, a culture, a tradition.
Generations of workers called Boeing their home. Engineers designed the planes and, in conert with managment, made the crucial safety and cost decisions.
McNerney, with the backing of the board and stockholders slashed and burned, cutting wages, fighting machinists and engineers on pensions and participation. They moved the headquarters to Chicago, sending the message - the pieces that make up Boeing are interchangeable, like Legos.
They pointed to other states eager to have Boeing aircraft built in their neighborhood in tax-subsidized plants and by cheap labor and said, "If you don't like it, we will pull out of WA. altogether." How did that work out? A dozen surveys all point to shoddy Dreamliner workmanship at the North Charleston plant.
It was great, for a while. Profits soared. Stockholders lined their pockets. The Big Three American auto makers have been here. After two decades of world dominance and BJ (Before Japan) they didn't think quality or craftsmanship were all that important. Consumers lost confidence in American-made cars. Sales plummeted. They finally turned it around. Here's hoping Boeing can do the same.
6
Caroline Kennedy and Nikki Haley as members of the board of directors piqued my interest. I did a quick perusal of the other members of the board. I mean no disrespect to these women or the other members of the board but I don't see any who have a background in aviation engineering. One had led Continental airlines...but he entered that company through the finance department.
I am not sure how one corrects a situation like this, but since the dollar drives everything...perhaps the stockholders need to demand some "content area expertise" and experience on their board.
I fly quite a lot--usually about 100k per year. I am hesitant to say, "never," but presently, I have a really hard time imagining myself ever boarding a 737 MAX unless I am truly convinced Boeing has gone "back to the drawing board."
If it has any foreseeable future, Boeing needs to bite the BIG and proverbial bullet with this one and start from scratch--listening primarily to engineers and pilots. Get a board of directors loaded with people who know how to keep the product in the air.
7
"Muilenburg received $23.4 million in total compensation in 2018, including a $13.1 million incentive payment after the company beat targets for sales, profit and cash flow. That came months after the first crash in Indonesia in October 2018. Vested stock options pushed his payout to just over $30 million." from Marketwatch. No further comment needed.
10
At least the man recognized his duty and resigned. Too bad the president of the country cannot see his duty.
1
Always wonder why the trope of "maximize shareholder wealth" is the guiding light for American business? It is certainly the philosophy which got Boeing into this dilemma, be it 'acceptable' risk, 'accelerated' release of engineering or whatever deficiency of business cycle which then caused the ensuing cover-up or equivocations of reality. The result is a pummeling of Boeing stock and reputation. So much for protecting Shareholder wealth. Sigh, why can't we simply strive for sound business principles?
4
“What is most dispiriting is appointing Calhoun as C.E.O. after he said that Dennis was doing everything right,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said Monday, calling for a new Boeing hearing with Mr. Calhoun as soon as possible. “That certainly leaves the impression that it will be business as usual. What’s needed now is a complete house cleaning, not only in personnel but in culture.”
Senator Blumenthal's above-quoted comment is THE most pertinent observation printed in this article about Mr. Muilenberg's firing. BOEING needs to completely clean house AND its culture as they stand today. The entire company has disgraced itself, and it will take a lot of heads-rolling and soul-searching before Boeing can earn back the public's trust.
FURTHERMORE, as I understand it, when Boeing redesigned the standard 737 to become the 737 MAX, it took a FUNDAMENTALLY AIRWORTHY craft, and MADE it NON-AIRWORTHY by repositioning its engines farther forward on the wings, thus throwing it OUT of aerodynamic balance, and REQUIRING the SOFTWARE FIX everyone has been talking endlessly about, in order to COMPENSATE for the imbalance! This is JUST PLAIN BAD AIRCRAFT DESIGN, and the underlying reason why the plane is unsafe.
The Boeing 737 Max should be recalled from all the airlines that bought it, and every plane either be re-engineered to again make it airworthy WITHOUT needing a software fix, or broken up for scrap.
5
What about the managers who made the decision to use data from only one angle of attack sensor? And the other managers who either signed off on it or were ignorant to the fact that aircraft require multiple redundancies, especially when dealing with systems that affect flight controls. Dennis Muilenburg was so far removed from these decisions. If you truly want to make a difference, get rid of the management layers that were directly responsible for the MCAS design decisions. Joe Sutter would truly be ashamed to see what Boeing has turned into.
7
The article states that the board includes Washington power players such as Nikki Haley and Caroline Kennedy. Perhaps that is part of the problem. Is either of them competent even to begin to understand the engineering activities of a company that produces sophisticated products based on complex modern technology? It might be wise for Boeing to appoint its board members on the basis of their technical and business expertise rather than their wealth and political connections.
16
Sadly, this is not the only case where a culture of engineering, research, concern for safety, and regulation by the FAA (and others) was overridden by a culture of greed, marketing, fast profits and "self-regulation"!
The latter is particularly egregious and ominous!
The FAA and Secretary of Transportation (Mrs Mitch McConnell!) are to blame too for their complicity. When will THEY be called to account?
8
If it's Boeing I'm not going
It will take a long time, if ever, to repair Boeing's reputation
7
This is all about one thing. Mullenberg declared (after sleeping on it) that the 737 was perfectly safe, after the Egyptair crash. As a proud former airline employee with a focus on statistics and planning, this single act made him dead to me. He knew the 737 was dangerous, and basically knew why. And he didn’t CARE. He should not have been allowed to continue as Boeing CEO. The government should have taken him into custody for interrogations over these deaths and, particularly, his enthusiastic lobbying for the 737 to keep flying. That was darkly insane.
6
@rjs7777
There was no Egyptair crash of a 737.
1
The really shameful part of this story will come once all the details of his "golden parachute" are revealed. He will walk away with more money than Boeing will pay to anyone who died on a Max under his watch.
16
This is why we NEED Federal regulation....and not just for airplanes.
6
A pristine brand, nurtured over the course of a century and trusted implicitly by airlines and the public alike lies in ruins, like the carcasses of those two 737 Max jets and the families of the 346 victims... All because of a soulless, rapacious profits-over-people culture that Muilenburg and the Boeing board fostered and allowed to flourish to suit their own greedy self-interests. Somebody needs to go to jail for this.
7
And to think, he could’ve taken the high road and resigned ... and lived to fight another day ... but instead of taking action, he waited for the board to act, falsely believing that the board would take no action, thereby illustrating that his poor judgment on the 737Max was not an isolated incident.
6
Why did it take the board so long to fire Muilenburg? What wasn't clear about the way this product was created and the way 346 souls lost their lives? Others' comments are correct: there is a lot more wrong here that just Muilenburg.
3
@Charlie I assume it is because the Board of Directors is just a rubber stamp for the CEO. I suspect the actual decision was made by a group of the largest institutional shareholders.
1
If a mechanic let two planes fly that he knew were defective, he would be tried for murder.
If a CEO lets this happen, he just resigns.
I wonder about his golden parachute.
7
Judging from what we know now about the 737 Maxx, Muilenburg should have been fired at least 4 times; for letting the problem occur, for trying to cover it up, for treating his customers like so many already dead people, and then for costing suppliers, employees, customers of all kinds, and government agencies many billions of dollars. Good riddance and please don’t show your face in public again.
4
When will The Times do the right thing and run a retraction disavowing the atrocious and wildly inappropriate William Langewiesche Sunday Magazine article that put the blame squarely on the Max pilots from Lion and Ethiopian Airlines?
These flight crews were wrongly blamed by Mr. Langewiesche for lacking the appropriate skills, reaction times, and airmanship to fight back against and successfully override the 737 Max’s initially secret MCAS system, a flight control override that was deliberately left out of the pilots’ troubleshooting guide book, one that relied on an easily damaged single point of failure, and one which Captain Sully Sullenberger himself said it would be difficult (even for him) to counter at low altitude, right after takeoff. Where is Mr. Langewiesche’s apology or his resignation letter, today?
9
I never got the impression Langewiesche put the blame "squarely" on the 2 pilots. I got the impression he was saying their lack of airmanship contributed to the fatal outcomes. After all, did any of these crashes occur with a US airline? And I thought the parallel he drew to problems (multiple crashes) several years earlier on domestic China flights with similarly "trained" pilots, and what had to be done to fix that situation, was insightful.
@ellienyc
Respectfully, one only has to watch the first five minutes of this “60 Minutes - Australia Edition” segment (available on YouTube) to see how wrongheaded and even deliberately diversionary, the W.L. cover story in the Sunday Magazine was, and why it should be revisited or retracted at this point.
Not to mention the now-published emails from Boeing’s former chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, who candidly told a colleague that the MCAS system was "running rampant.”
Or the testimony of Joseph Clayton, a technician at Boeing’s North Charleston plant, who detailed a pattern of rushed and poor workmanship there.
Or the testimony of former manager Ed Pierson, who actually worked on the 737 Max assembly, and who testified that he had urged senior managers to shut down the production line because of mistakes he observed and pressure on manufacturing teams to work weekends and cut corners.
But sadly, and perhaps more eloquently, the simulator recreation in the first segment of this “60 Minutes” episode, provides a better explanation as to exactly how the Max software was difficult to counter, regardless of the level of training of the flight crews: https://youtu.be/QytfYyHmxtc
2
You should identify yourself as representative of Boeing.
Are any Trump supporters that question Biden's son being on the Ukraine gas company's board going to also question Nikki Haley's qualifications to sit on Boeing's board? Almost 350 people died, brought the company to its knees, and will have a ripple effect on the economy for years to come.
7
@Patrick
Not a Trump fan, but I do need to note a few things:
1. Hailey isn't related to Trump, and nobody asked her to join the board to garner favor with the guy who pushed her out of government;
2. Hailey, unlike Biden, is pretty well-respected. She is not an alcoholic, not a drug addict, not broke, not being sued by a stripper half his age for child support. She did not sleep with her death brother's spouse, and was not kicked out of the Navy for using cocaine.
@GMooG
She was the Govenor of South Carolina, and extremely helpful in assisting Boeing in choosing South Carolina for its' second assembly plant, provided millions in State aid for additional expansion while she was governor, and was a staunch anti-union voice for Boeing in South Carolina.
Coincidence? I think not.
4
@bud The question is, what background does she have in aircraft manufacturing, satellite assembly and delivery?
I have somewhat more experience-spent time in assemble of aircraft, maintenance of aircraft and space systems and I don’t sit on a board.
So, I am light years ahead of both.
2
What's his golden parachute?
4
And yet he still gets to keep his massive fortune he accrued while getting these hundreds of people killed.
3
The whole board. Not just one all . NOT ENOUGH
Cahoun was on the board that oversees the culture of profit over safety, in fact he is as responsible as Muilenberg. He needs to go as well. Bring back Alan Mulally.
2
Surprise, he's a Trump supporter! See the pattern yet?
6
About time.
1
trump'l hire him!
2
Next SecDef? Trump will surely throw the current one under the bus for some transgression.
1
This is why we need strong regulations that are enforced. I’m surprised the Democrats and the airlines aren’t more vocal about what happened, considering they’re losing billions. The Republicans and Trump love to complain that regulations cost jobs. Well in this situation the Lack if regulations not only is costing jobs and money but also hundreds of lives. There will be more disasters, especially environmental disasters, if Trump’s deregulation zeal is allowed to continue.
5
Hope the greedy stockholders pressuring the board and CEO to produce ever more profit, have learned their lesson. Stop focusing on next quarter's numbers and look at the important long term things. Maybe the SEC should ban quarterly reporting by these companies, to help them focus on the long term, and to help them resist the hugely greedy stockholders.
3
Richard Feynman taught us that if the ‘O’ rings on the shuttle routinely burned through one fourth of the way, it didn’t mean you had a safety factor of four. It meant you had a problem because they should not burn through. Period.
Same principle here. Don’t design a response to a known problem. Engineer the problem out of the product.
13
There needs to be some type of guarantee, some security in place, to ensure those new Maxes sitting in storage are not reconfigured/renamed and foisted on an innocent flying public, as if they are different planes. Not possible? Look at all the contortions, lies and flimflam that has gone on at Boeing for the past 2 years, if not longer. At this point, all trust in the company has vanished, and for good reason.
7
boeing must abandon its current culture of subservience to shareholder equity and return to a culture of safety and quality. the next CEO must be an engineer if boeing is to regain the trust of the flying public.
16
Sadly, Muilenberg started out as a Boeing engineer, so I think the next Boeing CEO should most importantly value safety over the price of Boeing stock.
When it comes to production of big passenger aircrafts strict impartial control is good for business.
This is an example where lobbying has triumphed all the way to failure
5
It common knowledge that the MAX is retro Detroit mentalliry when they sold the same autos under different brands. The MAX is a 737 with hugely more powerful, larger turbofan engines slapped on and electronics to make it flyable if the electronics work, which it has not reliably. The problems are obviously deeper than the antistall MAC software or airlines could switch it off and certify people pilots to fly without it by now.
It's the Corvair the airways. The Corvair was an especially unstable car design with larger engines.
The Air Force has fly by wire jets, uncontrollable manually by pilots, designed from scratch with quadruple computer redundancy.
I am a pilot and will never fly on a MAX now that I know how it was made.
13
@Queeg Your invocation of the Corvair is brilliant. I think it is maybe the best simile for the 737 MAX debacle. I just hope that in 25 years GM doesn't turn out to be an apt simile for Boeing.
3
Well that'll teach him! Now he'll have to scrape by like the rest of us. Hopefully he saved some of his, ah...
$23.39 million salary from last year alone.
Well, I'm sure being let go will have major consequences on his finding a job in the future.
14
Finally. But really. Does anyone believe that the Board isn’t culpable? How putting two long time Boeing players in to run the company can be viewed as transformational or even fixative is beyond comprehension. These are the same guys who green lighted the CEO’s strategy and tactics. And on top of it all, how many millions ($) will be doled out to the conquerors of the sky while the families of the dead wait for justice. Boeing continues to be disgusting.
11
Just amazing how long it takes to get rid of a completely tone deaf, incompetent manipulator. (Wait, how did he ever get this job??)
5
It's disappointing that Muilenburg's replacement, David Calhoun, has a track record mostly in various kinds of financial, rather than aeronautical engineering. Can someone who is far more of a balance sheet manager than airplane designer give Boeing the tone and priority they desperately need now?
14
Production and profits go up... quality goes down. For the CEO, the bottom line is profit.
5
@Louise Actually, I think that for THIS CEO, the bottom line was his $23e06 compensation for 2018. Smart guy. He bled the Boeing company very well for about 4 years.
3
And how many tens of millions is Muilenburg walking away with in cash, stock and stock options, pensions and health benefits and on and on. This deal with Calhoun is very reminiscent of what happened at Wells Fargo when Stumpf got canned but whose fall was cushioned by a $30M golden parachute. And his replacement was just as bad as Stumpf. Boeing needs to start over. It is broken.
7
The CFO will replace him? Really? This is the problem. Boeing should be run by engineers and not finance people. This is what caused the decline of Boeing in the first place. After the McDonnell Douglas merger, profits became the focus of the Boeing.
The South Carolina plant is unreliable. The bean counters are running the show. Boeings reputation is in the toilet. One more crash and the company is over.
I am afraid to fly on a Boeing plane.
15
Muilenburg was described in the New York Times as an "engineer," though an "introverted" one.
1
Muilenburg and Donald Trump had several telephone conversations and at least one meeting at the White House. Most recently they talked by phone within the past 10 days. I'm terribly curious what they talked about. I don't recall Trump making a strong supportive statement of FAA's taking a go-slow careful approach before certifying this plane safe to fly. I suspect that was not his primary concern or primary topic of conversation with Muilenburg. More likely, Trump, like Muilenburg was concerned how quickly the plane could fly and Boeing could resume manufacture in order to assist the economy and strengthening his election chances. On such a grave matter, it's striking that the President would not publicly reinforce and support the need for caution in a review the FAA was doing especially when the Boeing CEO was known to be pushing for a rapid and less deliberate review.
7
Maybe he was trying to get Trump to put pressure on European leaders to let the FAA go ahead and recertify the plane without the agreement of European regulators (who Boeing thought were slowing things down by taking long Xmas vacations,).
1
While I don't disagree with Mr. Muilenburg's firing, the problems at Boeing are related to culture. Listening to the information that has come out since the crashes, it is clear to me that this culture exists at the plants assembling the aircraft and likely goes all the way to the top. When production speed, above all else, becomes the number one priority and that priority is pushed from upper management, to middle management, to factory worker, this is the result. When a Boeing employee says he no longer feels safe having his family fly in a Boeing aircraft, that should terrify us all. Safety and quality must not take a back seat to profit of American companies want to remain relevant.
Boeing would be wise to begin a cultural transformation starting from down, the sooner the better.
8
Fired him just before Christmas. Hey, CEO, how does it feel to be treated like an employee? (Golden parachute excepted, of course.)
7
@Scott Anderson
he'll get a raise at the next job.
This was the inevitable result of de-regulation.
Everything that went wrong would have been prevented from happening by the business and regulatory climate operating in a well regulated economy creates.
The fiction that business people can be trusted to do the right thing when the amounts of money get into the stratosphere is a bald faced lie. The risk compared to the reward are practically negligible without the regulatory climate that would have provided the risk necessary to prevent the slapdash lazy, extract money as much and as fast as you can managing that created this mess.
7
Just another example of a top-heavy corporation with a FAA-cozy, useless board of directors whose primary goal was to buy back and inflate stock, pay dividends and reward themselves financially while spending millions on advertising trying to convince consumers that it's "about the customer flying experience and safety." If Boeing couldn't beat the competition and be profitable doing it the right way, they shouldn't be in business. The shame of all this is that lives were lost, trust by pilots and the flying public fractured, and the possible loss of jobs by the truly dedicated, quality-driven engineers and assembly workers WHO WERE IGNORED when they raised flags early in the process. Will corporate America ever learn?
6
A CEO who has no sense of civic responsibility? Since when has our country done anything but praise such people? Surely not since Ronald Reagan was President.
Boeing stopped testing new systems with the people who would use them and relied upon computer programs, instead. This was a lot cheaper and faster, and was good enough to satisfy explicit and well defined requirements and specifications. It eliminated the subjective element which people always introduce and which must be evaluated as part of tests. However, It fails to reveal unanticipated issues which people recognize as they perform tests.
The FAA has not forced companies like Boeing to do the kind of testing that discovers the unanticipated.
7
This situation, in the starkest terms, has made the case for a well funded independent regulator. Somebody should make that a thing. How many more instances of gross malfeasance and graft as a result of deregulation before there is a consensus that the deregulation agenda, along with basically all the substantial keystones of modern GOP, has failed and continues to at every opportunity. Both sidesism might ask " show me successful Democratic policy!", but this is a false equivocation. Nowhere in the Democrats policies can you point to anything that resembles the systematic obstruction, pugilism, and recalcitrance display by the GOP. Look at the outgoing KY governor's pardons. Can this be anything else than an obvious, and likely successful, attempt to ensure that voters are outraged and legislature must act to limit the governor's powers. Right when a Democrat is about to take office. We've seen this type of play before, but... pardoning convicted child rapists?... There is no low too low apparently. I'm horrified to imagine how much lower it goes while we watch sore losers burn it all down.
6
Is this a surprise? The man has disgraced his company and the nation. Not to mention the deaths. And the wavering integrity.
The board should fire itself.
8
And what expertise in this area do Nikki Haley and Caroline Kennedy have to qualify as members of the board? Oh, right, none. Just well known names to impress shareholders. Makes me crazy.
1
Any words on what his severance package will be?
4
And how much is he getting for his severance package?
4
He'll get a golden parachute, something that the passengers of the 737 never got.
7
Trump deregulation on show here. Muilenburg should be personally tied up in litigation for the remainder of his life.
3
So typical of corporate mentality. Throw a sacrificial offering to the pitch-forked peasants at the gate and that will shut them up. And then to replace the CEO with the chairman, a guy who worked hand-in-glove with this CEO to coverup the safety issues of the MAX, is just so insultingly insufferable. Can Boeing be any more insensitive to the grieving family members who lost loved ones?
How about this: The entire Boeing board is fired along with top management. Until that happens, stop insulting our intelligence.
11
Mullenburg has degrees in aeronautics and engineering. He knew better. Where is his shame, apologies, remorse? At least in Japan, fallen executives face the cameras and bow their heads.
5
Tell me that his pay ends today and that he gets no golden parachute, and I might be impressed.
6
Not a cause for celebration. They’ve replaced him with an accountant with deep ties to the industry. That’s code for lobbyists. So they’re clearly still putting profits first and trying to manage the problem rather than solve it. If they were serious about safety, they’d hire an engineer from the outside.
13
Each board member should look in the mirror and honestly evaluate their contribution to ensuring corporate governance. The confidence of the flying public, the lynchpin of a major economic sector and a key defense contractor when there are so few due to consolidation are the stakes. Please do the right thing.
3
Remember when somebody poisoned Tylenol? The company's reaction was to shut everything down immediately and investigate. People couldn't get Tylenol for a while but they weren't getting poisoned, either. This became, literally, a textbook case showing how an honourable company deals with a crisis. It cost them a lot of money but, guess what, we still trust the product. Boeing chose to manage their crisis differently and showed all of us that profits were prioritized above safety and, now, trust has been severely compromised. Unfortunate.
21
This article seems to focus on Muilenburg's failings as a corporate spokesman, manager and leader, with little or no reference to the engineering issues with the 737 MAX that Boeing needs to address. As an aeronautical engineer and pilot with a long career in airplane aerodynamics, flight vehicle dynamics and control, it seems to me that there is little in the article relating to how, and whether, the technical issues with the 737 MAX have been resolved. Boeing’s future will ultimately be determined by the answer to that question and not by the personality and communications skills of its CEO. And, as of now, I have heard very little in the way of a definitive statement from Boeing which gives me confidence that all the technical issues have been dealt with successfully.
17
In another story in this paper, which was on the front page this morning,it was reported that he got chewed out by the head of the FAA last week for, among other things,(1) being slow to provide requested paperwork on software changes and (2) calling the head of the FAA and asking them to go ahead and recertify the plane without normal agreement of European regulators because Euros take long Xmas vacations and wouldn't be back until January.
3
So I understand this, Muilenberg with a huge problem spiraling out of control, calls Trump to prevent the FAA from grounding Boeing’s accident prone Max planes. Am I reading this right?
7
That’s why I believe he is guilty of negligent homicide.
5
So the boaard of Boeing finally fired Meullenberg because FINALLY they realized that the optics of having him as CEO were unpalatable. I don't see how that changes anything.
7
I don't care about fired. When is Muilenberg getting arrested for 346 counts of involuntary manslaughter?
14
@Alex
Maybe when he is actually responsible for killing 324 people? This is absurd. Do you hold the CEOs of car manufacturers to this standard?
Good question. Companies like Dodge advertise irresponsible use of their products which are essentially designed to kill, and they should be held responsible.
1
Absurd? If Chevrolet built a mystery box into their cars that would drive you off the road without you being able to correct whatever inputs it was throwing at you, i bet you that they would be held accountable, not even mentioning the fact that the geniuses at Boeing connected it to only one AOA sensor.
2
The Boeing 737 Max is a classic example of corporate greed and "group think". To save money, they created a jerry-rigged hardware design that they tried to correct with software. It should have been thrown away at the first hint of trouble. Instead, Boeing insisted they could "make it work." Very sad, and frankly, very criminal.
14
Underneath it all is the fierce, unending struggle between production and craftsmanship. Tensions between quantity and quality will continue to beset industry - and by extension, every single one of us - no matter how many CEO's get fired.
2
He should have been fired months ago, along with an engineer or executive who tried to hush up this disaster. Supposedly, all that is needed is a software fix. Well, fix it! You need months to do that?
4
My son is studying engineering and just finished an ethics course. Business schools have such courses too. So why bother with this curriculum? Corporations pay millions to CEOs who ultimately make decisions that literally kill others.
7
Maybe before they hand him his severance package they should let him know that he must fly one of these planes that aren’t repaired to the destination of his choice and the check will be waiting for him to retrieve from some of the families whose relatives were on the planes that didn’t land quite right.
12
The passengers went down in flames but Mr Muilenburg is leisurely gliding in his golden parachute. If this happened in China, both the FAA head and Muilenburg would be hold in house arrests awaiting prosecution. Only in the corrupt world of Washington-corporate alliance would the top 1% always escape person responsibility of their criminal act.
14
A government corporate alliance is outlined in the book, “Friendly Fascism” by Bertram Gross.
3
This man, and anyone else responsible at Boeing, should be tried in criminal court. I don't understand how the negligence they showed isn't akin to manslaughter. They should be in prison for the rest of their lives, for God's sake.
7
stunning that it took this long.
11
Muilenburg's legacy will be scoffing out loud when anyone at Boeing says, "Safety is our highest priority".
5
This is the result of the Friedman Doctrine:
The Friedman Doctrine, or Shareholder Theory, is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman which holds that a firm's main responsibility is to its shareholders.
7
Will he be put on trial? Surely many of his actions are criminal.
5
As noted by many posters, like others of his ilk, this failed CEO will be well compensated for his failures. Nice golden parachute for him, but I can't hep but think about those poor souls who went down in one of his planes and paid the price for his management. I'd say it's pretty sad, but it's more like utterly awful.
7
The 737Max is inherently unstable and needs to be written off and replaced. Boeing needs to swallow the bitter pill and move forward before Russian, Chinese, & European jet makers gain that market share.
8
He'll walk with his 80 million net worth intact and a severance check in the millions. No tears for this guy. Just money.
7
Shouldn't somebody at Boeing be headed to jail for manslaughter or at least criminal negligence? There has got to be a trove of emails pointing to executives who approved the decision to let the Max fly despite knowing it had this technical problem. Suing the company for remuneration isn't enough - people's lives mean more than dollar signs. Car companies issue recalls when they find dangerous technical flaws, so how can an airplane company just push it through? This is just like the Sacklers and the opiod problem. No one is held criminally responsible, so corporations are encouraged to just take these risks and write off civil suits as a cost of doing business.
Let CEOs go to jail or death row with the accompanying infamy, and I guarantee we'd see far less of these crimes. Why is the Boeing CEO different than Ted Bundy - merely because he didn't have a knife in his hands and kill the victim mano a mano? He killed fifteen times as many people, and unlike a psychopath, he can't point to a mental or biological deficit to explain is behavior. He let people die for money and stock shares, and that's arguably worse.
6
Big deal. He got a big fat "Golden Parachute" for Christmas.
4
Another rich boy getting a slap on the wrist instead of any real punishment. Meanwhile hundreds of people are dead and their families brokenhearted. Such is the nature of our capitalist oligarchy.
5
if it is a Boeing, I'm not going !
10
I’ll give him about two years of no public appearances before he ends up as a pundit on Fox News.
7
Surprised he lasted so long, He has so much blood on his hands ...
3
When the main guy, who this guy worked for, was some clod whose main experience was selling tooth brushes what more can one say?
Besides building airplanes designed to fly into the ground the "bosses" flew Boeing into the ground...Frito Lay of Engineering
What does one expect when the company is being run by fools from Harvard with MBA's in potato chip merchandising...
3
The rot of corporate culture is endemic in the western world .
5
Why are you quoting "Dan Nang" Dick in your story, what does he have to do with ANYTHING Boeing does?
Boeing should have fired this guy months ago.
1
Now that the CEO is out I like to hear from all the engineers who must have complained or voiced serious concerns and were told to shut up or eased out. I want to hear from them.
6
@SridharC that’s not going to happen unless they never want to work again or they decided to become priests
3
What are the chances that Boeing will do what other companies do with failed products? Take the Max, rebrand it and market it as new and improved!
4
It's already being done, Ryanair has already removed the designation Max off their Max-flying-coffins, and renamed it "737-8200". Fortunately it seems that they won't be allowed to fly anytime soon, and the FAA is not willing to have their good name tarnished like that again, and will probably insist on the mystery box being thought tested and connected to a system that is actually REDUNDANT.
1
@Alex The FAA's good name? They lost that designation when they allowed Boeing to do its own self-inspections of the Max instead of the Feds.
6
Yes, i might have stretched it a little there. Point taken.
1
Why did this take so long and what about ALL the executives that report to him not to mention those at the FAA that helped push this plane through the process.
There must be hundreds of executives and high ranking union leaders that need to go as well, with out stock, pensions or free health care for life.
One man did not cause all of this.
3
First,Boeing moved its HQ from Seattle, where they've been making the planes for decades to Chicago, to make money. Then it opened the non-union plant near Charleston to build the787. I think I'm right that Lufthansa will not accept aircraft built there. Boeing closed its unionized 737 plant in Wichita. It tried to break the Machinists union in Renton. All press reports had it that work conditions there got brutal. I looked at the Board and found just one person with aircraft expertise, Mr. Muilenburg. Am I wrong to see a pattern in these?
13
I know for a fact that QR is not accepting aircraft from that plant. There's a very interesting AlJazeera documentary called Broken Dreams about it.
2
Boeing has “decided that a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders.”
Translation: The current president Dennis Muilenburg, a real engineer with Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Aeronautics and Astronautics, a 34 year veteran of the company, but who has clunky PR skills -- will now be forced, at knifepoint, to walk the plank by the Directors to give a false impression of substantial change.
As an engineer, I disagree with this course of action as substantial in any away.
The decision to retrofit the 737 with the newer LEAP engines -- at a cost of $2-$4 billion, was certainly something that came up many times for technical review across major swaths of executive leadership of the entire company. As such, the entire leadership of the company is responsible in some ways. We absolutely know there had to have been meetings where the tradeoffs in discussion between a new design (better) and a retrofitted 737 design (cheaper) were discussed.
Ted Colbert, Stanley Deal and Greg Hyslop are the only three engineers on the 15 person Executive Council (Board) of Boeing. It would be interesting to know what these three men were thinking when the safety / profitability conversation came up in Boeing's board meetings, or if it even came up at all.
7
@Kip Leitner And what sort of "tradeoff" do you suggest for 400 or so dead passengers?
3
I think you miss my point, which is that Muilenburg, despite his well-documented faults, is hardly the sole -- if even primary -- agent in this horrible diasaster. He happened to be the CEO on watch when the disaster occurred, but if you read up on his personal history inside Boeing, you'll quickly see that the former CEO (the first non-engineer) in Boeings history -- and the board that served with him -- and those C-Suite executives and senior engineering VP's underneath these guys -- that is -- the people who made the decision to retrofit rather than design a new plane -- are the ones primarily responsible. Muilenburg was co-opted into the "profit first" system, but he's hard the sole -- or even primary person -- responsible.
3
What’s the probability that the 400 737 Max sitting on tarmacs across the world will remain grounded? What’s scary is the thought that Boeing will inevitably try to force those aircraft back into operation to avoid the financial crisis of a $10b write off. Any airline that forces its passengers to fly that aircraft will be literally rolling the dice. I’ll never step foot in one.
8
Why are Nikki Haley and Caroline Kennedy on the board of directors? What possible knowledge or experience can they possibly contribute to this, or any, technology company? Time to get rid of the PR stars and have real leaders, directors, and knowledgeable experts be on the Boards of Directors.
21
@MzF , All corporate boards are full of similar "empty suits". Plus Ms.. Kennedy really needed the 350K yearly BoD fee.
The Board has been inactive far too long and hiding behind the CEO. They all should resign as well. And no severance, of course.
6
We need a head to feed to the raging crowds. The crowds will interpret that the lost head is reason d’etre for all the greed in the company. We are clean, viola!
5
Or the alternative, actually holding those well paid decision makers responsible for the loss of 346 souls, since the decision was to increase the revenue of the share holders by making the airspeed/aoa disagree indicator optional (and very expensive), and equipping that monstrosity with a mystery box that would fly you into the ground with increasing oscillations.
1
NYTimes, your next assignment is to uncover just how soft a landing he gets thanks to an good parachute he might have.
7
If this was Japan we'd probably be expecting harakiri.
5
Why is NPR reporting that Muilenburg "resigned" while NYT reports he was fired? Does that have anything to do with Boeing's benevolence to the conservative NPR coffers? It's revealing how money changes the way facts are reported in America and confirms the conservative bias of NPR reporting.
4
About time, Boeing.
1
On one point I agree with political conservatives who like to trot out the otherwise empty argument that the government should be run like a business: at least the screwed up joker at the top who has run the organization into the ground (in Boeing’s case, literally) can be readily fired from the job.
If only we could abort the Trump administration’s incompetence, corruption, malfeasance, perversion and derangement as easily.
2
I'm surprised it took so long. Of course, this doesn 't mean he won't be richly remunedrated for his f-ups when he leaves.
5
Clearly this action is a day late. Such a tragedy for the those killed because of his lack of leadership.
I’d like to also ask the New York Times to publish his entire severance agreement for all the see. Not to do so would be improper journalism.
5
Corporations cover for each other... friendly fascism.
Also remember that the Boeing failed with its critical Space Launch this weekend.. The “Starliner” couldn’t make orbit thereby giving SpaceX a leg up..
Strangely it was also tied to computer programming failure..
He’s always smiling and glad handing like most American CEOs he’s a fraud..
2
In the face of competition, Boeing developed a modification of the very successful 737. The modification included the MCAS system, which relied on AOA (Angle Of Attack) data. Boeing screwed up here. The MCAS system was installed without documentation and without pilot training. Apparently, MCAS had failed before the two fatal crashes but were dealt with by competent pilots.
The aircrews of the two fatal crashes were lacking in the airmanship skills of American pilots. I am not attempting to exonerate Boeing who bears responsibility for poorly implementing the MCAS system but is in no way responsible
pilots of limited skill.
So now we have suspended production of a fine aircraft until a software fix is completed. And the CEO, an engineer rather than a lawyer or accountant is fired. Wow!!
1
@Pete Kantor
" I am not attempting to exonerate Boeing who bears responsibility for poorly implementing the MCAS system but is in no way responsible
pilots of limited skill."
So, Boeing is not planning to sell the 737 Max to any country apart from the US? So, only 'American pilots' get to fly this 'fine' aircraft? Absence of American pilots hasn't deterred Boeing's global sales teams before, has it?
In any case, your argument is false. Read the Indonesian TSB's report on the Lion Air crash. It's conclusions don't match yours. Perhaps there weren't enough Americans on the investigating committee.
3
The entire board should be terminated. They tried, request Trump allow continued filing. These people are evil and must be terminated... non violently of course.
Who needs to take this crap from the little people when you're fabulously wealthy and will only get richer by leaving behind this sordid thing called 'work'.
The US has a glut of short-sighted, self-serving men leading large corporations. I just wish there was karma that would inflict pain on these really nasty people. But they'll live out their lives in multiple 10 million dollar houses and private jets.
3
As an airplane mechanic/pilot who built two passenger airplanes that are still flying, I understand the equation of safety versus cost. Once the bean counters take over a technology company, they reduce everything to an equation. Actuaries tell the bean counters how often they can expect accidents and the lawyers tell them how much they're liable for. If they can insure the corporation to minimize their cost from accidents, safety is sacrificed to maximize profits. In the 1980s I watched a major auto manufacturer "whore" their product for the sale goal. Short term profits so the CEO, board and shareholders get maximum return.
To an engineer/mechanic/pilot like me, the concept is absolutely repulsive. The board that fired Muilenburg is probably equally remiss but they got their loot while hundreds were killed.
Until the board and CEO serve jail time, this will never change. Until federal law mandate that passenger safety is more important than shareholder value, there is no reason for the 1% to change corporate bylaws.
Finally, Trump is emblematic of unrestrained looting as evidenced by his repeated trampling of the Emoluments Clause. With a role model like Trump at the helm, all we have is a side show like this sacrificial firing which attempts to mitigate the crimes corporations commit daily.
6
Agree that prison time would change corporate behavior. C-Suite executives calculate their self interest. Even if there is a small chance they will be caught and convicted, if the potential consequences are sharing a jail cell with other criminals, they won’t take the risk.
2
@Airplane builder
As an aside, the bean counters ruin any company. See health care for example.
But, bean counters only identify cuts. Corporate poobahs make the policy. In the quest for maximized profits, every other consideration—safety, quality, employees—are deemed expendable.
1
So this CEO cared more about his damn company and was bullying/trying to get all those planes back in the air. My confidence is Dead and gone when it comes to the 737 max and I would not get in one till they are in the air at least a year without an incident!!
I am sure I am not the only one!
3
once a NYT person went on about how there is no difference between insure and ensure. he was another stupid person. the boeing board is smahter.
Good riddance to this ruthless, shameless murderer.
3
Its not just abt 737Max. They screwed up their recent rocket launch for Nasa. Gotta go!
2
Finally. How in the hell did this not happen six months ago?! Governance of American corporations is in a sorry state.
2
As usual, throughout this horrible business, Boeing has been a day late and a dollar short. They should have fired him months ago; instead they gave him chances to screw up further. Screw their shareholders; what they need to be doing is building safe airplanes and settling their huge debt to the families of the deceased. In a US court, by the way, not some nonsense in a low-budget court in the East or in Ethiopia. Leave it to Boeing to try to settle the claims overseas when they built the planes here. Jerks.
3
What do I know about branding, maybe nothing (but I did become President!), but if I were Boeing, I would FIX the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features, & REBRAND the plane with a new name.
No product has suffered like this one. But again, what the hell do I know?
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump 3:29 AM - 15 Apr 2019
Scary when Trump seems to knows more than the CEO
2
What worries me is that the MAX 737 is at once Boeing's best selling plane and the plane NOBODY wants to fly. Boeing still wants to force people fly this plane, instead of developing one with a new fuselage, fit for the new engines, with no needs for MCAS correction.
Good riddance, Mullenberg. I was amazed he tried to push the FAA to allow old uncertified planes to be delivered before the FAA had a chance to thoroughly asses and greenlight their faulty product.
1
Bcoz of your planes crashed and killed 346 people . Now i am scared to get in to boeing planes you got blood in your hands. But you are still after a 7 figure pay
SHAME ON YOU
I hope you have nightmares every night
1
Your statement, "The company has been particularly hurt by its uneven communication with lawmakers, regulators and aviation unions," omitted to say that the company was particularly hurt by the negligent homicide it caused. Was it not??
Second, note to Congressional Republicans: Caroline Kennedy is on Boeing's board. She is not a aerospace expert. Boards do not appoint only experts to their boards of directors. Ergo: Burisma was fine to appoint Hunter Biden, which they did only to elevate the company's standing in the eyes of investors. All of the Congressional Republicans know this, and acted like they didn't at the impeachment trial.
Third, what is Caroline Kennedy going to do about Calhoun now being in charge, when, as you write, that means Boeing will continue doing business as usual, and that a house-cleaning is what's needed instead?
4
Hilarious!! A profile in courage?!
1
The story about a bunch of technical regulatory people showing up for a serious briefing on changes to the Max and being only given a power point presentation sounds like there are very deep cultural problems in the company. And who are the people on the board who have the faintest clue about the character of highly technical engineering development work? Certainly not their finance industry chairman. Fly Airbus and forget Boeing.
2
These people made decisions that killed people. Then, after people had been killed, they made more decisions that killed more people.
If I'd forgotten to put a rivet in a plane that was the cause of killing people I'd be in jail for negligent homicide. If I did it twice...
One law for us, and none for them. Indeed, big payouts most likely and living high on the hog in retirement - for killing people.
5
Boeing went down with Muilenberg and hopefully will spring back up with a new CEO. What took so long to fire an incompetent CEO. Hopefully lessons learned for all airplane manufacturers. It safe to fly until some one cuts corners and makes flying less safe.
1
Putting corporate profits before technical excellence and safety is an absolute shameful sin. Period.
My understanding is that Boeing knowingly modified an existing aircraft making it aerodynamically unstable for the sake of speed-to-market and lower r&d and production costs. Then they purposely withheld the fact that additional training was required to avoid monetary penalties. If this isn’t a criminal act or at least a civil offense I don’t know what is.
In addition to firing the CEO why aren’t we rounding up more Boeing executives and FAA leaders and holding them accountable for all the precious lives that were lost.
A disgraceful chapter in the U.S. aeronautics industry and the FAA which is SUPPOSE to protect the American people. SHAMEFUL!!!
2
Muilenberg’s departure was imminent. So, for me, no surprises there. What is presently unclear is whether the corporate ethos at Boeing will make room for a necessary dose of humility or whether they will continue to be arrogant and believe that in this day and age they can bully & buy their way through this. This is precisely where the Board can be most influential; so far they too seem to have their head in the clouds. Sad!
I’d rather Boeing totally disappear. The CEO though a loser is also a scapegoat. Their culture of rapacious greed is responsible.
1
@Yuri Pelham
I agree with your sentiments here. But really, the problem is offering a plane with several safety systems that can be deleted for a discount. They should probably have one set price with all safety devices included.
Got a hared time believing the CEO would have been involved in much regarding the regulation process. Those are the design leadsa who made certain decisions.
1
@Robert Miller
"But really, the problem is offering a plane with several safety systems that can be deleted for a discount."
If you mean the 'AoA DISAGREE' warning, that's totally untrue. Boeing stated and continue to state, that the aircraft can be operated safely WITHOUT the AoA sensor alert - in fact, Boeing say that the alert system is NOT a safety feature.
The AoA DISAGREE alert CANNOT be 'removed for a discount'. It's a standard, non-optional feature on the earlier 737 NG model. The earliest 737 Max deliveries also came supplied with the AoA alert system. Boeing REMOVED it when it was subsequently found that the 737 Max flight management software (new software, in fact) was functionally unable to work with the A0A sensors Boeing fitted to the 737 Max. The only workaround for this Boeing foul-up was for airlines to retrofit new, upgraded AoA sensors - at considerable extra cost. Only 20% of airlines globally did this, the others were reassured by Boeing's statement that the 737 Max was safe without it.
Read the Indonesian TSB report which explains this in detail. This 'cheapskate foreign airlines' schtick is no more convincing than the 'dumb foreign pilots' argument.
I have read nothing which indicates that any other 'safety system' was removed from either of the crash 737 Max planes - whether for discount or not.
1
This Boeing board is rotten to its core.
Wouldn’t you expect the board of a manufacturing company to insist on designing the next iteration of the product when the current model goes into service (would have saved two years by now)? Wouldn’t you expect the board to immediately plan for alternatives when you know the current design is being stretched to its MAX(!)?
Wouldn’t you expect the board not to borrow capital to pay for dividends when you know you are in difficulties?
Unbelievable board non-performance! The board must be exchanged at once.
1
Predatory neoliberal capitalism stripped naked, feeble and ineffective regulators, a corrupt board of directors rubber-stamping greed instead of effective oversight, hundreds of death. Multiply this scene times thousands and a clear picture emerges of the rot within the corporate world leadership.
3
I'll fly on a Boeing before I'll vote for a Democrat. It's all a matter of risk assessment.
1
@Mike
Welcome aboard.
as held by the ideology of some people, "Corporations are people too, my friend"
by that standard the person that is Boeing Corporation must be charged with mass murder.
That it the only test for 'justice' in this.
1
this is what i love about the modern capitalist system of "the board of directors."
the board hires CEOs and sets their compensation. the board reviews business metrics and is counseled and must approve or reject all major business decisions. the board, not the CEO, is ultimately responsible to shareholders, who elect or reject board members. but let's not get bogged down in that, since most shareholders are either ignorant or institutional purchasers who have enormous heft and construct a board to their liking.
no, let's go back to the board of directors. who are they?
http://www.boeing.com/company/general-info/corporate-governance.page
these are the people who sat next to CEO muilenburg at the round table of board meetings and voted up or down the scenarios and tradeoffs of business decisions.
these are the people ultimately responsible. but they have no fiduciary liability. they have no press scrutiny. they have no exposure to public ire. and that is how they like it.
board of directors: we decide, we hide, and we get to walk away.
1
OK, the board does have guts to make a decision.
Dennis failed to provide a comprehensive review to the congress and FAA and flying public of the 737 max failure, a gross mistake, massive, because understanding is 1st, fixing it is 2nd. (This astonished me, I thought he should have been fired for that, immediately.)
Dennis failed to deal effectively with United Technologies, who provide the instruments that flew the 737's into the ground.
Dennis failed to properly address whistleblower complaints on the 737 line that went public. These should have been addressed effectively so public releasing of them was not an issue.
Dennis failed to protect his company from subcontractor United Technologies, UTC, conflict of interest influence, the same company which makes the faulty instruments, UTC, also has a spiffy new engine they desperately want on the 737max.
Yes. You read that right.
United Technologies has gone overboard in protecting their subcontract work on the instrumentation system that killed 300+ people; a massive blinking warning light if ever there was one, unlike the blinking warning light four dead pilots of 737max airplanes never got.
And,
Lastly,
Dennis quality control over numerous projects is a textbook example of how not to do quality control, and if you need me to, I'll tell you the time on that problem.
Which clock do you want me to use?
I'll ask Dennis.
Hope his golden parachute works.
@angry veteran
An interesting conspiracy theory but, there's absolutely NO evidence that the Angle of Attack sensor (the instrument that began the whole failure sequence for Lion Air Boeing 737 Max PK-LQP) suffers from manufacturing defect or QA faults by its maker Rosemount Inc, (subsequently, Rockwell-Collins, subsequently Collins Aerospace) - owned by UT since 2017. These sensors remain in service on many aircraft other than the 737 Max, including Airbus models.
The AoA sensor fitted to Lion Air on the morning of the crash was, as is often the case with expensive aircraft parts, a USED unit, refurbished by a Boeing and FAA approved aerospace contractor called Xtra Aerospace LLC of Miramar, Florida. Subsequent audit showed that Xtra Aerospace lacked appropriate sensor calibration equipment and failed to follow approved servicing procedures and protocols. The FAA stripped Xtra of its accreditation in October 2019.
Whilst there are doubts about the adequacy of Lion Air ground engineers' work on the doomed aircraft's sensors, the Indonesian TSB considers it likely that Xtra Aerospace -a US company - supplied Lion Air with an improperly refurbished, incorrectly calibrated AoA sensor. Which is nothing to do with United Technologies.
1
If Boeing can fire Muilenberg why can't Congress impeach AND remove Trump from office? Trump is by far the worse CEO of the two men.
3
I think he should go to prison for his gross malfeasance.
1
Did he get a Clock as a Retirement gift?
2
Perhaps he could use the income from bonuses he has received in the past ten years to compensate the people who died under his leadership. Cuts were made and everyone knows this.
Come on, jail him and others. It’s the right thing to do. US executives have been killing people for years.
1
After crashing her reputation as Trump's mouthpiece at the United Nations, Nimrata Randhawa couldn't get hired at the International House of Pancakes.
So why is she on the Board of Directors at Boeing?
3
@Hugh Briss
Nikki Haley, a SC governor, is from the same state where Boeing built a non-union factory, (SC) in Charleston to maximize profit. More than a coincidence she's on the Board.
2
Finally. Now admit that the Max is a complete failure and write it off.
1
Boeing's (Muilenburg's) congressional lobbying efforts to emasculate the FAA were very successful--and it all came back to bite him in the butt. Now the FAA is doing what it otherwise would have been doing all along--scrutinizing things. And you can bet that they have a high-powered magnifying glass to do so. I'm sure Mr. Muilenburg will get a sweetheart severance and won't have to work another day in his life. Sad.
1
Washington Post runs head that he resigned. Uh huh. Thanks for the Times calling it for what it is. Have been a Post subscriber for years and deeply admire its work, but there is only one Times.
Nice that not everyone in the upper echelons is congenitally tone deaf.
Uh oh. WaPo reports Muilenberg resigned.
Don't worry, I'm sure he'll get a million gillion dollars in parting wellfare-for-the-rich money.
Boeing should sell all of those 737 Max planes to the US military to be used as guided missiles...
1
You killed people. Twice. Hello. It doesn't get worse than this.
2
What took so long?
1
How much is he getting paid to get fired? I don’t want to read the article, don’t want to throw up
1
Software errors: Read all about it here. It's been little covered by our Globalist H-1B promoting media. [June]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers
https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/more-boeing-hypocrisy-and-suppliers-will-feel-fallout
In Obama's disastrous website launch, the main healthcare.gov contractors were heavily H-1B & Indian programmer cos.; they played up this low cost angle on their own websites. The media never mentioned this in the two weeks that this was the hottest national story.
Many are quick to blame Boeing for this fiasco.
There are a few more players that deserve the blame-Congress for starving the FAA of needed resources and Trump and his cabal of congress persons who are quick to deregulate in order to “foster business”.
So, in the world of aircraft certification there was little oversight by the regulatory authority it would appear. And Boeing, in its zeal to compete with Airbus on numbers, rather than good reliable aircraft, succumbed to doing it on the cheap rather than doing it right-the cheap being using an existing airframe decades old and attempting to populate it with new technology. The cheap is the regulation concerning “basis of certification”-add the Max to the existing 737 data sheets.
So, the stockholders, and stakeholders, of Boeing need to ask the question-is it prudent to desire to be number one in market share with questionable aircraft, or, relinquish that market share for a quality product?
Think about it Boeing Directors.
@Dan
An interesting point to come to light as a result of the current spat between Boeing and foreign aviation regulators - principally EASA - is the cozy relationship that has existed between the regulators for decades. I commented here about this more than one year ago.
Go to the FAA's website and pull up any airworthiness directive (ADs are the way regulators force changes on operators and manufacturers) on any Airbus plane. The go to EASA and pull up their AD. Lo and behold, they are one and the same. The FAA document is word for word EASA's except with an FAA logo applied. Do the same with Embraer, Antonov, Bombardier and, each time, you'll find that the FAA simply cuts and pastes ADs from the manufacturing country's regulator. Similarly, EASA's directives about Boeing are actually FAA directives. EASA doesn't even bother with the logo sleight of hand.
It turns out that these processes have also applied to certifications. To all intents and purposes, every Airbus flying in US airspace has been certified not by the FAA but by the European regulator.
It's the abrupt ending of these previously comfortable, cronyistic relations that are causing such upheaval in aviation regualtion globally. Maybe good. But I notice EASA's demands in the last few days that they have future independent oversight over Boeing - EASA inspectors actually based at Boeing's Renton plant - are just too rich for Uncle Sam.
2
Boeing is in real trouble. This is a classic case of what not to do in a crisis. Boeing has been unsympathetic and overly optimistic. The CEO should have been fired many months ago. Boeing should have been very careful to cooperate with the FAA and not play the pressure games that got them in this trouble in the first place. Like many corporations today, Boeing now follows the Milton Friedman economic philosophy that shareholders come first. This is a terribly flawed economic philosophy that is doomed to fail. It is obvious that there is a huge disconnect between the engineers who build the planes in Renton, WA and management in Chicago, IL. I am an aviation enthusiast and have been my whole life. I was a big admirer of Boeing and it’s planes. Not anymore. I’m disgusted with Boeing now and go out of my way to not fly on their planes. I fly exclusively on Airbus planes and feel very safe. After all, Captain Sully landed an Airbus on the Hudson River. I doubt a Boeing aircraft would have had such a happy ending. If it’s Boeing I ain’t going.
5
“ If it’s Boeing I ain’t going”. Me either.
Boycott till they are bankrupted.
This should have come within weeks of the second 737 Max crash. The fact the Boeing board took this long to action a token removal of their CEO speaks volumes.
2
This tragic saga is a prime example of what Elizabeth Warren has been shouting from the rooftops about for years. Corporate greed, government deregulation, the gold-gilded revolving door where politicians exit federal buildings to become lobbyists, and capitalism run amok led to this. The prime function of corporations is to turn a profit. The main benefactors of a successful company are the executive leaders, corporate board members and shareholders. Consumers and low-level employees always pay the price for that greed. Taxpayers bailed out Wall Street to the tune of roughly half a trillion dollars. In the case of Boeing, customers on the two downed 737 Max planes paid the ultimate price.
Until top executives are held personally accountable for their crimes, like being forced to pay meaningful fines and serving jail time, nothing will change. We can have a chance to change everything in November 2020. But only if we elect progressives like Warren and other candidates not beholden to corporate overlords up and down the ballot, from sea to shining sea.
2
Another supposedly shareholder-pleasing move to cap off a pile of shareholder-pleasing moves that precipitated the total loss of two hulls and more than 340 deaths. Nothing meaningful will change, though. The perverse incentives that emphasized shareholder value and sacrificed the reputation of Boeing as a maker of some of the world's safest aircraft haven't changed. All have been sacrificed on the altars of profits and share price.
Mr. Muilenberg, for all his ineptitude, has just been made the fall guy. They need to disband this board of directors, and reconstitute a board with a greater emphasis on safety and product quality.
Fewer shareholder shenanigans and political lobbying, and more attention to quality engineering are what's needed.
1
As a potential past and future flier destined for and/or doomed to a 737 Max jetliner, having a Boeing CEO resign presumably as the airplane maker’s proverbial sacrificial lamb nine months after the jets were grounded is insufficient.
When I read about such seriously questionable big business negligence cases—especially those of equal or worse offenders, notably the makers of the relatively new candy flavoured vaping concoctions resulting in life-threatening ailments (e.g. popcorn lung)—I picture, albeit a bit cynically, corporate CEOs figuratively shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying that their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. Meanwhile, the shareholders, also figuratively shrugging their shoulders, defensively state that they just collect the dividends—the CEOs are the ones to make the moral and ethical decisions.
2
Muilenburg made the mistake so many crisis managers make - thinking he could manage his way out of the issue rather than actually solve the problem.
3
The shareholders reaped the benefits of overly optimistic risky decisions that filled their pockets. Now that those risks are finally being realized the CEO gets the boot. No accountability to the shareholders and the greed that drives the company to take unacceptable risks. I guess the accountability is the share price which has fallen. The problem with these companies and the system is that they continually push risk and the acceptable risk in order to make more profit. By the time the risk is realized it’s too late (some tragic thing has happened). Listen to an investor call, and how much is based on fact and not overly optimistic projections. No one three quarters ago prior to the accident would ever mention issues with the system on an investor call.
Finally, I wonder what his exit parachute package will be. How many millions?
3
Another example for the obviously decreasing value of life in this country. I hope for the families of the victims that there will be a criminal investigation bringing the perpetrators of the corporate greed that was obviously rampant under the leadership of this CEO to justice. The risk of the crashes was obviously weighed against the profit to be made by rushing the unfinished 737 max to the market. It can not be that those who were responsible for signing off on the flawed 737 max design are just losing their jobs and walk away. The victims of their irresponsible decisions do not have that opportunity.
2
I think company Boards are way over rated as to providing an independent check on corporate behavior.
They are part-time people mostly too close to the executives and too far from actual corporate actions.
So problems analogous to Boeing are just waiting to happen. Think ENRON scandal.
1
As a shareholder, long overdue.
4
Too big to fly! Boeing needs to be investigated thoroughly! Given their cozy relationship with the government, I would like to know if US Treasury money was used to prop up their share price during their troubles over the last year. Given the breadth of their economic influence on their supply chain and the amount of DOD work they do, it would not surprise me if Uncle Sam has already gotten involved (quietly). They already operate like a state owned entity anyway.
4
Among corporate CEO's, how many are sociopaths? The Boeing Board appointed and was quite supportive of Muilenburg. How come they get to stay on? The new CEO gave him a strong endorsement just last week. Are his priorities any different?
7
I wonder what his severance package looks like? Unlikely to qualify for food stamps is my guess.
4
Good point! I’m sure an article will be published in the coming days. can’t wait.
Too little, too late. The sheer amount of mistakes that paved the way for the Max Fiasco are too many to be attributed to a single individual.
The fact that it took more than a year of this continous trainwreck for the CEO to be fired clearly demonstrated the incompetence of the remaining board.
Remember, it's not just Muilenberg who has advocated stock buy back schemes over R&D, this culture has been allowed to rot for years and the short term profits have been huge. Too bad it has rotted away the reputation as the aerospace state of the art that was carefully assembled over a century, including the priceless trust of aviation agencies over the world.
380
Great comment. Well said. The board stuck with their fearless leader yet the infection may still lie deep within
26
@Erik The CEO did what shareholders expected him to do: buying back shares. It is the "greed is good" culture in action.
42
@Asinus I agree, so the problems cannot be expected to simply go away with the CEO.
28
With Muilenburg out let’s rip the bandaid off. Here’s my “wish list” for Boeing:
1. Move the HQ from Chicago back to Seattle. Executive team is currently thousands of miles away from the engineers and mechanics
2. Write-off the 737 MAX - have a complete redesign or start fresh with another airplane program
3. Hold the people who designed the MAX accountable - not just those who unfortunately inherited the problems from their predecessors. Did they get their promotions, retired with their pensions....? Let’s identify them and hold them accountable too!
7
Not giving back any salary or bonuses though, after hauling away cash equal to many multiples of what flight crews earn.
4
Not only bad CEO, bad board, unable to make the obvious judgement on their CEO until NYT’s yesterday’s article made it obvious.
4
What’s his golden parachute?
1
So it's safe to hypothesize that Mr. Milenburg is one of those 'Psychopaths in the C-Suite'.
Reference for those who haven't read the science: https://sites.insead.edu/facultyresearch/research/doc.cfm?did=50923
2
I wonder how big his bonus will be?
1
The board should also be replaced. It should not have taken them this long to rid of Muilenburg.
4
Now we will see how stupid the heads of the Airlines are and which of them decide to fly the Ford Pinto, oh excuse me the 737MAX aircraft after knowing well the flying public does not want to board this plane.
United, American, Southwest. The proof of who is putting the cash before the customer will become very apparent.
I will continue to fly Delta thank you.
4
Like that lady's jacket said: "I really don't care. Do U"? Another golden parachute loser in the human being department. Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
1
He should be held responsible for 346 deaths and families broken.
4
Criminal capitalism behaviour
4
@George Martínez
"Criminal capitalism..."
the very definition of a tautology.
1
Prison time may be in order, 350+ dead. He can’t plead ignorance of the problem. It’s unconscionable that CEOs like this put profits ahead of human life, DISGRACEFUL!
3
Amazing how simple if deadly things reveal how incompetent high flying arrogant highly over-paid CEOs turn out to be - not to mention the boards of these gargantuan sized companies filled with incompetent people. Why Biden Jr is singled out as unusual or out of the norm on corporate boards is ridiculous. They are mostly populated by the same incestuous good ole boy network patting each other's back because of mere circumstantial luck, inherited fortune or a prominent name. And what do you know, a member of Boeing's incompetent board will now become CEO.
The question now is, will Boeing's board give Muilenburg what they did not give 346 victims of their incompetence - a golden parachute?
3
No human is infallible--error is always at least possible regardless of the degree of probability--ranging from 0 to1--an infinity.
The good fix it. The bad coverup. The bad and ugly lie. The hyper bad/ugly blatantly lie.
3
"Boeing on Monday fired its chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg."
A sincere thank you.
Sure took long enough.
2
it's about time...
1
He should be in jail! End of story!
4
The Board of Boeing shouldn't escape notice or culpability since it was the fiduciary duty of this Board to provide oversight of senior executive actions. It appears that the priority of Boeing's board members was just to collect a lucrative salary. Safety of the 737 Max was not on their list. Having the right board members, who are not intimidated to ask critical questions or hold senior staff accountable, is paramount to the operations of a successful company.
4
I’ve asked this a thousand times and I’ll ask again because I’ve never gotten an answer: Is Airbus any better than Boeing in the way they develop their planes? Is the regulatory scrutiny and better? Or has Airbus just been lucky? Should the flying public trust Airbus more than Boeing?
2
@Marc
EASA has been making political capital by claiming that that the European regulatory regime is much more rigorous and intrusive than the FAA's. Further, that MCAS would not have been certified in Europe [1]
Boeing and Airbus do have different design and testing philosophies. Airbus has a much longer successful pedigree of flight automation than Boeing. Airbus, like Lockheed-Martin, Lear, even Cessna, undertake rigorous mathematical virtual modelling of all flight control systems. Boeing chose, decades ago, not to go that route.
I guess Airbus *could* have fouled up. But, they didn't and they haven't. An A320 'Max' scenario would have finished the company off - Airbus don't have trillions of dollars of military contracts like Boeing does, nor the POTUS as the company's benefactor.
[1] But, EASA DID accept the FAA's certification of MCAS. That reciprocal arrangement has now ended.
1
Actually it is the Board of Directors that should be fired.
7
Too!
1
One hears politicians talking about "job killing regulation". What we have here is people killing deregulation.
4
One hopes that the lesson for corporate America is that outsourcing core competency like computer programming leads to mediocre products (see, Microsoft), and sometimes, disastrous results.
2
Boeing is a predatory monopoly that should be broken up.
5
...and the new CEO should fire the entire board.
1
Small government though. Ayn Rand will be cheesed off.
1
Why is he not charged with manslaughter?
4
Boing executives and others should be criminally charged. But this is the U.S.
3
If this were Japan, Mullenburg would have voluntarily resigned in great public shame.
8
Hopefully he remembers to take his golden parachute when he flies on the MAX 8.
3
How large was his golden parachute??
1
Big Business kills with impunity. Who is going to jail? Paying off the families of the dead? If corporations are people they should be able to charge a corporation as a person and in this case if found guilty of a mass killing the company should be "executed". The federal government should take it. Tell all shareholders too bad, you invested in a murderous company you lose your money. Reform it, like a jail sentence of say 10 years where it is managed by government and all proceeds go to the families of the dead. Then let it have a probation hearing to decide if it is a good enough corporate citizen to allow to function on its own in society. I've had it corporate America killing us based on it's ability to weasel out through the courts. Shut it down before it kills again.
4
Natalie and David,
your reporting has been relentless (thank you).
I wonder - is the relevant District Attorney compelled at all to file criminal charges against Muhlenberg and Boeing? If not, why? And why aren’t the passengers’ kin protesting to do so?
1
Criminal charges should be filed against the ex CEO and the BOD
1
Trump will pick him to head the Federal Aviation Administration.
7
I’d be interested to know what his compensation package looks like. Is he, like so many others in the C-suite, to be rewarded for failure?
2
Looking forward to seeing the e-mails from before this crisis of those in Boeing who are now throwing him under the bus (er...the 737 Max).
3
I've sat on the board of some public companies and left that field after being all too often sickened by power hungry, profit before people, egocentric, not nice people.
Please don't feel bad for Muilenburg. His Boeing stock is worth about $40 million today and much of that will be in his pocket after taxes when he sells it. His estimated net worth is about $80 million. So, Denny, you're 55. Don't sweat the small stuff. It's winter here so maybe just hop a jet and fly off to some lovely south Pacific paradise. Better yet, make it your retirement trip and just charter your own private jet, preferably an Airbus.
Oh and don't let all of those MAX deaths bother you too much, just find a good shrink to help you deal with that. Go a step further and hire that good shrink and bring them on the trip with you.
5
Boeing's directors didn't fire the CEO until the NYTimes told them what their responsibilities were. Otherwise, Boeing and the rest of us would have lost while the big-boys only smiled. Boeing's directors didn't fire the CEO until the NYTimes told them what their responsibilities were. Otherwise, Boeing and the rest of us would have lost while the big-boys only smiled.
2
Muilenburg is a figurehead.
Capitalism killed those passengers.
4
@Kimron C. Thomas. The Soviets weren't known for designing and building safe or comfortable passenger jets.
1
... and here comes the golden parachute ...
1
This is long, long overdue. Muilenburg's lack of sincerity and attempts to jam the FAA and other regulators were further evidence of a corporate culture that does not care about anything but Boeing. Given the length of time that Muilenburg was allowed to stay in charge in the face of all his missteps and crass, incompetence handling of the crisis, I am not optimistic that Boeing will change its corporate culture at all.
187
@Hammerwielder They were all too busy getting each other on other boards and playing golf.
9
@Hammerwielder
Their big mistake was letting the awful Harry Stonecipher move the HQ to Chicago. They lost touch with what was really going on.
In corporate America it's profits first and always: human safety and life is expendable. Mr. Muilenburg will be fine with his golden parachute. Yet the chills go up the spine with the thought of Boeing jerry-rigging a doomed jet to keep it in the air after two crashes. Good God!
3
Moving the front offices to Chicago left to large a distance between production line and decision-making. That might work with widgets, but not in aircraft.
1
this is the verbiage from Boeing's C-Suite announcing production halt of 737 MAX.
"We believe this decision is least disruptive to maintaining long-term production system and supply chain health," reads the company's Monday evening news release.
"This decision is driven by a number of factors, including the extension of certification into 2020, the uncertainty about the timing and conditions of return to service and global training approvals, and the importance of ensuring that we can prioritize the delivery of stored aircraft."
English translation—"Corporate guidance to share holders is, 'You are on your own. We are slow walking our inevitable decision to curtail the fatally flawed 737 MAX product and take our lumps. A massive share write down will be unavoidable at a later date.'"
3
I'm confused. I thought CEOs of big companies were paid hundreds of times more than regular folks because they are so tremendously capable and so incredibly hard to find. Could it be possible that they are really not as unique and indispensable as they think? And that corporate board; are they incredibly brilliant leaders guiding the company with their amazing wisdom and vision? Hmmm.
4
I agree with so much of what I'm reading on the Comments section so why write another? Because lost in much of this is the role the Board of Directors played.
Their job is oversight. Where were they when the first plane went down? Where have they been all these months while a CEO so clearly out of his depth was allowed to continue mismanaging every element of a tragedy that never needed to happen. The answer is binary; either the board was so stupid they didn't see Muilenburg's incompetence and guilt, or they did and hoped it would all just go away.
There was messaging and action to take on day one. This board, having failed Boeing and all of us as well, should hand in their own notices too. Then a real board of directors, one not tied to the old boy network, can fire every manager responsible and lead this firm back to a culture driven by safety, not annual bonuses.
403
@ijarvis
I believe there is a parable or a predictive statement from the 80's that describes this situation.
The chase for profit above all else has led to a kind of peerage in the corporate offices of this nation where people who never did anything real in this world are given control of those who do. Everything they have done is based on a theory not a single one of them could construct a real world experiment to test.
50
@ijarvis It certainly begs the question of what qualifications Nikki Hailey or Caroline Kennedy have to sit on the Boeing Board.
38
@ijarvis They were all too busy getting each other on other boards and playing golf.
15
Muilenburg is a perfect candidate for Transportation Secretary in this administration. The only minor problem is finding Elaine Chao another job. Trump can always consult her husband Mitch for ideas about that. Those two are as thick as thieves.
5
hey! let's hire $9 per hour software engineers in India who know nothing about aeronautics. we'll save a ton of money and we can put that money into our bonuses. the PEOPLE at Boeing who came up with that idea and the PEOPLE who agreed to it SHOULD BE FIRED.
4
Greedy, out of touch executives favoring share value over safety, the failure to heed warnings from engineers and technicians, the FAA in an inappropriately close relationship with the airline management- all these “holes” lined up to create the text book “Swiss cheese” model often used to explain airline crashes. My heart goes out to all the families who will be facing this festive season grieving loved ones.
176
@Susan As a potential past and future flier destined for and/or doomed to a 737 Max jetliner, having a Boeing CEO resign presumably as the airplane maker’s proverbial sacrificial lamb nine months after the jets were grounded is insufficient.
When I read about such seriously questionable big business negligence cases—especially those of equal or worse offenders, notably the makers of the relatively new candy flavoured vaping concoctions resulting in life-threatening ailments (e.g. popcorn lung)—I picture, albeit a bit cynically, corporate CEOs figuratively shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying that their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. Meanwhile, the shareholders, also figuratively shrugging their shoulders, defensively state that they just collect the dividends—the CEOs are the ones to make the moral and ethical decisions.
10
@Frank Sterle Jr The whole board should be required to fly on a MAX whenever an "improved" one is introduced.
7
Oh great, another accountant running an engineering company. For those who read the New Yorker article, The Case Against Boeing, you will probably agree with me just replacing a numbers person with another will not address the issue of the accountants not understanding culture of Boeing and the engineering issues. It unlikely Nikki Haley and her other board members are informed enough to understand. Otherwise they would have rethought who needs to run Boeing.
5
This is exactly what happened at IBM years ago. The accountants over ruled the engineers, he company lost talent, technical leadership, share value.
4
Until they stop choosing CEOs with financial backgrounds and start choosing CEOs with aeronautical engineering backgrounds, Boeing will continue to flounder. Calhoun has a degree from VA Tech in accounting. Publications: "How Companies Win: Profiting from Demand-Driven Business Models No Matter What Business You're In"—or not.
7
The MAX will never fly again. And by calling the MAX a "737" they ruined Boeing's best brand. Hopefully Calhoun takes the company back to its roots where solid engineering and safety trumped all.
3
In order to get real change in the attitudes of corporate America, not only the ex-CEO, but also each member of the Board of Directors, specifically including the celebrity members, should be indicted for manslaughter, and held without bail as flight risks pending trial. Perhaps even the "corporate veil" should be "pierced" and major shareholders brought to justice as well, possibly even minor shareholders.
2
This is inevitable when a company faces public scrutiny and at the global level but increasingly dominated by "leaders" who climbed corporate hierarchy by appeasing (mostly) corrupt shareholders and promoted cutting corners to make more profit.
It's also a symptom of increasingly poor quality engineers and other professionals (our own or from abroad in such high tech sectors), who are buying heavy weight degrees and then joining "prestigious" companies like Boeing mainly by virtue of parental wealth and connections. America's dominance in technology and science is narrowing down at a much faster rate now than anytime in its modern history since WW1. In short, it's one of the consequences of crony capitalism and would take long to repair the damage under excellent and able leadership.
2
Who is surprised?
Cutting corners, avoiding real regulation, not listening to engineers, shareholder profits over safety, lack of concern for workers, out of touch board, this is standard corporate culture in the USA.
7
The problem isn’t one CEO, but the entire business culture of today.
Today’s ideal CEO/Captain of Industry is little different from the Robber Barons of the late 19th century.
“Maximizing shareholder value” means cutting corners wherever possible. Buying politicians to grease the wheels is cheap, too.
14
@T - Most large companies aren't global monopolies. Boeing could get away with it.
1
@T: I'm surprised W didn't dispel the myth that MBAs can manage anything.
2
@HL
It happens with smaller firms as well. State politicians are quite inexpensive.
1
Given the scope and breadth of problems at Boeing, members of the board and presumably too the chairman should also be excused from service, and a new circle of board talent not besmirched by the present crisis called to set things aright. This is yet another clear example of greed and profits over everything else, even when potentially hundreds of lives are at stake until the 737 Max is properly certified and shown to be a truly safe commercial aircraft.
8
how about customer service and or baggage handling for one of the majors? min 24 months or so. no pay.
5
The answer seems to be to replace the engines on the 737 Max, rename it the 737 Middling and get on with designing a new plane. No customer will feel safe on these planes and the airlines know it. Southwest would seem to have the most leverage here, so they need to get Boeing moving in the right direction. The FAA appears to be doing their job by grounding them.
This is as big or bigger than the VW Diesel scandal. Engineering departments need better ethics training. They are destroying companies because they are too afraid to stand up to the bean counters. Quality over quantity should be the motto.
3
@RK
"Engineering departments need better ethics training."
It is a slander of Boeing Engineers to question their ethics.
Boeing made a corporate decision to farm out the software development at fault to a team of Indian engineers working on H1B visas.
1
@RK: Managements are well seeded with Trumpism. Don't even get caught smirking in a photograph where everybody else is praying.
1
It's not just the 737 Max crisis. Boeing sent its Starliner spacecraft into space without checking the synchronization of the spacecraft's clock. Seriously? This is Travel 101. Boeing seems to be hiring programmers who have no idea of how software programs will impact operating systems (the key word being "operating"). Perhaps they're writing packets of code from different areas within the company; no one is analyzing how well these packets work together in real time with the actual aircraft or spacecraft.
4
But, but, regulations wouldn't be good for the economy! (aka the profits for the uberwealthy)
4
Boeing engineers wanted to design a new plane. But management ordered them to kludge up the current model, slap bigger engines on it, hide the resulting instability with software, and avoid the expense of training pilots.
Does this kind of management thinking apply only to the 737 Max? Prolly not.
Will I fly Boeing again? Prolly not.
14
This is what happens when you let the corporate finance types control the organization. All they care about is making it cheaper and faster and they could not care less if they make it so it needs to be repair and modified on delivery to make it safe and functional. This mentality is not just confined to Boeing, the air craft industry or corporate manufacturing. It is a mindset. Build a strong organization with excellent employees, a safety culture sound financial practices, a capital reserve and a good bottom line and some corporate raider will come in and fire the good engineering and manufacturing staff. rob the cash reserves, sell off the assets and when they have run the organization into the ground leave it for dead.
These upper management types are what is wrong with capitalism today and why it needs to be reined in and heavily taxed and regulated by social democratic government.
8
Even after being fired from Boeing, Dennis A. Muilenburg will end up smelling like a rose because at those levels, someone else will hire him as another chief executive in some capacity or at the very least he will be a consultant or on someone else's board of directors.
In the meantime, it will be very difficult to trust the integrity of Boeing and what they claim to be true down the road. Not sure how a company comes back from that.
I would have trusted them AND the FAA if these 737 Max planes had been pulled immediately on THEIR insistence rather than being the lone wolf in refusing to acknowledge that a serious problem/fatal flaw occurred.
For Boeing to fire it's chief executive is a good first step, but the problem is much deeper and more wide spread than that. Hopefully more stringent actions are being put into place.
But I have to be honest, I don't think I will trust Boeing for a very long time for they have developed a comfort in misleading and lying to the flying public.
6
Fully retire the 737 Max. Redesign a replacement from the ground up, a new series. The Max is extremely dynamically unstable because Boeing refused to redesign from the ground up when they should have before, and so Boeing placed overly heavy engines on the 737 body, creating a need for the MCAS. What human being ever wants to fly on the 737 Max again? Not me, and I'm an aerospace engineer.
6
Isn't there some old saying about closing the barn door after the horse escaped ?
Or about whipping a dead horse ?
The bread and water will continue until morale, OR PROFITS IMPROVE !
1
I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever step foot on a Boeing 737 Max jet again.
Only part of that decision is based on the aircraft’s technical deficiencies. The rest is based on Boeing’s reluctance to fully acknowledge and fully accept accountability for them.
3
Firing this man is not justice. The leader of Boeing is responsible for deaths of hundreds and should be prosecuted for manslaughter and imprisoned.
6
In corporate America it's profits first and always: human safety and life is expendable. Mr. Muilenburg will be fine with his golden parachute. Yet the chills go up the spine with the thought of Boeing jerry-rigging a doomed jet to keep it in the air after two crashes. Good God!
3
Maybe this episode will put the final nail to the coffin of the idea that government can, and should, be run like a business. See how well that worked out (self-certification)? The Max8 should have required a new type certificate. The path Boeing chose ends up costing the company far more, not counting lives lost, in the long run. Muilenburg had to go.
1
This is the way our businesses work. If you are in a business where cost cutting could cost lives, you roll the dice.
2
So this guy forgot his roots and placed money, greed over safety and transparency. Shocking, not shocking. We have Senators who have done the same. Peeps have to be able to trust you.
3
Perhaps it's time to recycle all the 737 Max parts. Start from scratch, at whatever cost. Perhaps fewer planes are in order with the need to reduce the world carbon footprint.
2
"Muilenburg get $48.1 MILLION in his severance" --- says a commenter.
"...he lobbied Trump after the 2nd crash to avoid grounding the 737"---says another comment.
So, Muilenburg could finance a run for political office as a Republican, and fit right in to the party.
He could contribute plenty to Trump's 2020 campaign, and even be chosen for vice president under Trump if re-elected---and fit right in to the current corporate monarchy that is America now.
3
Never would have believed Boeing would fall so far. Sad.
2
Interesting tidbit from these articles. Most importantly that Muilenburg rose through the defense side. Read: cost insensitive and arrogant. With only one real customer, Muilenburg never learned how to listen. Bad fit for commercial which is much more sensitive to failures and has to maintain both margin and competence. He is the natural outcome of treating experienced workers and engineers like chattel. Next step: close Chicago HQ and reopen in Renton. Reconnect with core competencies, and improve communication.
2
There is a simple way for Boeing to restore trust in the 737Max. Boeing execs commit to taking multiple commercial flights to and from destinations around the world, with their families, in their re-engineered plane.
3
This is the worst aspect of Capitalism; anything for a buck
Time to re-read All My Sons
What company is next?
4
It doesn't matter if the plane is deemed safe in the future. Feeling safe will not quell the deep-seated anger of many who are have reached their tolerance limit for people in corporations who are greedy, egotistical, lacking-in-intellignece and outright mean
3
This tragic fiasco is an indictment of corporate governance as well as capitalism in the 21st century.
"...David Calhoun, the chairman, would replace Mr. Muilenburg on Jan. 13. ...Boeing’s chief financial officer, Greg Smith, will serve as interim chief executive..."
Earlier reporting on Boeing's catastrophe singled out the corporate decision to contract out the development of the MCAS system to H1B visa software engineers as the smoking gun—a decision sanction by David Calhoun, the chairman and Greg Smith the chief financial officer, and one would presume the full Executive Board of Boeing.
The CEO is always the sacrificial lamb offered up in appeasement when inherent and systemic failures built into corporate structures yield the inevitable.
Corporate capitalism is a false economy covering for our nations true economy—kleptocracy.
5
Well, that only took 8 months longer than it needed to.
3
Even if the 737 Max is supposedly proved airworthy again I will not fly in Boeing's coffin.
5
Why aren't you reporting the amount of Dennis Muilenburg's severance package -- i.e. the tens of millions he surely got paid for leading this company into catastrophe? This should be a teachable moment about the merits of "merit."
As for "restoring confidence" in Boeing: As long as the entire current board of directors remains in place, good luck with that! They are all accessories to reckless endangerment.
1
@Frank F
"Why aren't you reporting the amount of Dennis Muilenburg's severance package?"
your demand of NYT reporting is grossly unfair and unreasonable.
the announcement of Muilenburg's firing is hours old.
the details of a severance package are undoubtedly being negotiated at this very moment.
Almost no one knows the name of AIRBUS 's CEO but everybody knows Dennis Muilenburg of BOEING because his leadership was so mediocre and uncompetent that now the BOEING brand is heavily and forever (?) tarnished for it is associated with greed,lack of engineering competence and disregard for passengers'safety.
The entire staff of executives including the CEO involved with the BOEING 737 MAX 's misconception and hasty lauching needs to be held accountable and give back the huge bonuses they should never have received.
4
The Peter Principle in action.
2
This guy did what his board of directors wanted him to do and will leave with a golden parachute.
If Boeing hires a female CEO, then the company is going to go bankrupt or be "restructured;" women always seem to get picked to lead a company if it's expected to tank. Then they can be blamed and fired, and the good old boy network is unaffected.
1
What is astounding to me is how many of these comments are surprised by how Boeing does business. ALL corporations operate that way. The ONLY goal of a corporation is to make money. Read a corporate finance textbook. That is Chapter 1.
Please wake up and smell the rot coming from Wall Street.
6
What a farce. They hired this guy to maximize profits, with safety being a secondary concern, and they've always had the FAA in their pocket
"The company," whoever that is, should fire the whole board of directors.
I'm sure their profit situation will turn around as soon as the Department of War (Defense) buys come more war toys on no bid contracts.
4
Both crashes were the result of pilot error - they simply didn't know the plane well enough to be flying it. One crash was averted the day before because a better trained pilot was sitting in the jump seat and told them what to do. This is like blaming Toyota for a panicked 16 year-old rolling a car over. But, sure, throw SOMEBODY under the bus and say you've rooted out the problem - and will keep working on it! PR at it's best in handling human stupidity at it's worst. Boeing is taking the heat - more that it reasonably deserves - for its major customers cutting corners, not their own cheapness. Yeah, they're falling on their sword for money. Blame them for that - and blame their "greed" for covering up how many unsafe pilots are still (barely) flying at this very moment all over the world. As for the over-seas crews that service the same planes - very much the same story. The surprise is that there aren't more crashes. You think self driving cars will be safer? You're right. As will be self-flying planes - unless the repair crews jerk the paperwork around and certify stuff to fly that shouldn't - as ALSO happened in these crashes.
1
Good move. After the 2nd crash Muilenburg called his buddy Trump to reassure Trump that the plane was safe. He is symbolic of the culture that places profits over safety.
2
Besides which, someone has to sacrificed. That’s the American way.
Muilenburg is just one of them, entire Board needs to be fired....but that doesn't solve the problem because Business culture is exactly dictates what has been happened all along.
Business seeks short term gain over everything else, Financial people want that way.
It started with Enron and still going strong ..
1
A few more aerospace executives like this and we might actually manage lick climate change.
No one will be flying anymore.
4
I do not understand the following sentence from the article: "Boeing stock has fallen by 22 percent in this crisis, costing the company more than $8 billion."
Does Boeing own its own stock? That would be weird. Seems to me the loss was shouldered by whoever owns Boeing stock.
Now of course companies don't like to see their stock fall but it doesn't directly cost them anything, does is?
1
The NYT’s coverage of the this story has been great, but possibly even better has the the thoughtful, well informed comments by the readers have been fantastic. This story is not over. Production is on hold and the CEO is out, chapter two is just starting.
4
Boeing is a perfect example of a corporation run by accountants and lawyers: very little 91 days and further into the future matters and keep the cash coming in as long as no one gets killed.
Well, in this case people were killed, and the worst thing that will happen to the person ultimately responsible is a nice vacation and a sack full of money.
3
My high school child could have handled the crisis better than muilemburg did.
1
You can't expect a bean counter that created the problem to come up with a solution. He should have been fired when the problem came up.
1
I worked for a company like this. The new CEO contrived to destroy a thriving 40 year old company in 3 years. My suggestion to Boards of Directors: Listen to your engineers and scientists when they warn you something is wrong, and don't hire sociopaths.
5
Where does an ineffective and belligerent industry leader go from here? I smell a new Trump-administration appointment.
2
No worries- an opening as the head of the FAA will appear.
The article fails to mention that Mr. Muilenburg gets a $39 million severance package upon being fired. The ordinary Joe is hustled out with his belongings in a cardboard box.
1
He doesn't need our pity but he inherited this mess from the real villain, former CEO, Jim Mcnerney, whose slash and burn tactics have nearly ruined Boeing. They certainly trashed the Boeing spirit, "Engineers design planes, not management."
3
Previous CEO McNerney is really the one responsible. Cutting costs, instilling a culture amongst managers where safety came second.
4
Finally. What took them so long?
Lunatic Capitalism has to end. Muilenburg didn't get fired becasue he wiped out 346 human beings - he got fired because he was hurting profits.
Each of the 346 souls on those planes was a "canary in a coal mine". Let's honor them, by shutting the mine down, before it is too late for all of us.
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What goes around, comes around (remember Bombardier C Series), sure would be nice to have a completely redesigned plane. Another one of Trump's fawning stooges bites the dust!
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I wonder what his severance package is like. He is the Bruce Ismay of our age. (He was at the top of White Star Lines - recall Titanic and that he was a survivor, getting into a lifboat while women and children were left behind.)
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At least Boeing didn't make the announcement with a tweet on twitter.
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Seems to me at least one person at Boeing qualifies for at least a manslaughter charge.
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It’s OK. He has made his millions.
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