With a situation like this one would hope that CEO McNerney would be taking the helm, communicating confidently with the media that the issue is correctly gripped, that engineering resolutions are under way using the right engineers for the job (because no matter how it all plays out, those engineers will be the ones coming up with the right fix).
But instead we don't get this, we get silly statements meant to appease Wall Street "aviation analysts" who may write glibly about billions of dollars but don't know one end of an aircraft from the other. We get
PR wiffle-waffle that treats the receiving audience as know-nothings. We get multiple signs of some sort of stand-off between Boeing and the FAA. We get inappropriate downplaying of serious issues that anyone in the industry can see through.
At the corporate level Boeing need to realise that their potential customers pay good money for sophisticated engineering products. They don't pay money for media statements that don't add up, or other trivia. And these customers know that a competent engineering company needs competent top management that, whatever the issues, can put the right people in place to fix them. Who, hopefully, they still employ, and didn't outsource to save a few dollars on the quarterly earnings a while ago..