‘Incredibly damning’ Boeing messages show employee unease on 737 Max - Los Angeles Times

Boeing Co. released a new batch of internal messages in which company employees discussed deep unease with the 737 Max while ridiculing senior managers, customers and regulators.

“This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” said one company pilot in messages to a colleague in 2016, which Boeing disclosed publicly late Thursday. The company had already provided the documents to lawmakers and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

The communications threaten to upend Boeing’s efforts to rebuild public trust in the 737 Max, which has been grounded since March after two deadly crashes. The Democratic chairman of a U.S. House of Representatives committee overseeing an investigation of the Max called the messages “incredibly damning.”

The emails “paint a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was apparently willing to go to in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews, and the flying public, even as its own employees were sounding alarms internally,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chiarman Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, said in a statement.

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“We regret the content of these communications, and apologize to the FAA, Congress, our airline customers, and to the flying public for them,” Boeing said in a statement. “We have made significant changes as a company to enhance our safety processes, organizations, and culture.”

In a statement, the FAA said it has reviewed the Boeing messages and found that “nothing in the submission pointed to any safety risks that were not already identified as part of the ongoing review of proposed modifications to the aircraft.”

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2020-01-10 04:22:00Z