Boeing still does not get it.
Boeing CEO denies any 'technical slip' in 737 MAX crashes
Boeing chief Dennis Muilenburg denied Wednesday that the two recent crashes of the 737 MAX were due to any “technical slip” by Boeing during the jet’s design or certification.
Muilenburg conceded that erroneous information was fed to the airplanes on both flights by a faulty sensor on the fuselage, and that this false signal activated a new flight-control system on the MAX that repeatedly pushed the jet’s nose down.
Still, he adamantly denied that any fault in the design led to the deaths of the 346 people aboard the two planes.
“There is no technical slip or gap here,” Muilenburg said on an early morning conference call with Wall Street analysts following release of Boeing’s first-quarter earnings. “We understand our airplane. We understand how the design was accomplished, how the certification was accomplished, and remain fully confident in the product.”
So they understood that a single failure of a sensor would cause the plane to pitch nose down shortly after takeoff and they did not feel that it was necessary to inform pilots of this quirk? The words "reckless disregard" come to mind.
I understand that the CEO is trying to walk the line between what he wants to say for the lawyers (" not our fault, just a coincidence that two horrible pilots crashed our new design plane") and what he wants to say for customers ("we are on it, figured out the problem and now we have it fixed") but in my opinion he is failing as badly as the engineers. Liability for the two crashes is the least of Boeing's concerns at this point. Statements like this do not give me confidence that they are really interested in finding and fixing the fault, since they do not want to admit that there is one.