Outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun defended the company’s safety culture on Capitol Hill on Tuesday amid a flurry of regulatory scrutiny surrounding the aircraft manufacturer.
Calhoun told the Senate investigations subcommittee in a hearing that despite its problems, Boeing is making progress toward improving its quality control procedures.
“Our culture is far from perfect, but we are taking action and making progress,” Calhoun said in prepared remarks reported by the Associated Press. “We are taking comprehensive action today to strengthen safety and quality.”
The aerospace giant’s current troubles started in January, when a Boeing 737 Max 9 door plug blew out over Portland, Oregon during an Alaska Airlines flight. That sparked investigations into the company’s safety and quality control practices from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA said its inquiry “did not provide objective evidence of a foundational commitment to safety that matched Boeing’s descriptions of that objective.”
Calhoun took responsibility for the incident before the Senate. “Alaska was a manufacturing defect that created an unsafe airplane,” he said.
But the hits haven’t stopped coming. Just last week, it was reported that some components supplied to make jets used by Boeing and European rival Airbus have counterfeit titanium that was sold using fake documentation. In May, the FAA began investigating whether records related to Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner had been falsified. Amid the scrutiny, Calhoun, who has helmed the global airplane maker since January 2020, announced he will step down from the role by year’s end. Stan Deal, who leads the company’s commercial airplanes division, and Larry Kellner, the chairman of Boeing’s board of directors, are also exiting the company.
As Calhoun took his seat, protesters in the audience told him to “stop sending weapons to Israel,” referencing the company’s new multi-billion-dollar contract from the U.S. government for so-called “smart” bombs.
Also in attendance were families of the victims of a fatal 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that was in part caused by Boeing’s impartial disclosure of autopilot control features. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed 6 minutes after takeoff, killed all 157 people on board.
A year earlier, Lion Air Flight 610 killed all 189 people on board after it crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff. “I would like to apologize on behalf of all our Boeing associates for your pain past and present,” Calhoun said to the audience. “We apologize for any grief we may have caused.”
“Five years ago, Boeing made a promise to overhaul its safety practices and culture. That promise proved empty, and the American people deserve an explanation,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the investigations subcommittee, said in announcing Tuesday’s hearing. Blumenthal referred to the hearing as a “moment of reckoning” for the company.
Though he said that “we need Boeing to succeed,” he told Calhoun that he thought there was “overwhelming evidence” that a plea agreement resulting from an investigation into the incident has been violated and that he thought “prosecution should be pursued.”
Blumenthal asked Calhoun whether Boeing had done enough to change in the years since. Calhoun replied: “I ask myself that question every day: Have we done enough?”
Calhoun told lawmakers that the company “took responsibility and cooperated transparently with the NTSB and the FAA.” He emphasized that the company has increased its focus on safety and that he has instructed workers to step forward if they see something wrong on the assembly line. In April, Boeing whistleblowers told the Senate that three of Boeing’s models — the 737 Max, the 787 Dreamliner and the 777 models — had serious quality concerns.
One whistleblower who had raised concerns about the 787, John Barnett, died by suicide in March after what Blumenthal suggested was immense pressure to keep quiet. Barnett’s mother and brother were in attendance. Blumenthal asked Calhoun whether he could say how many people had been fired for retaliating against whistleblowers. Calhoun said he could not.
Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican who is the committee’s ranking chairman, asked whether Calhoun had ever met with a whistleblower. Calhoun said he had not.