Boeing cuts down production of 737 Max as crash investigations continue
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg announced on Friday that his company will cut production of planes in Renton while trying to fix the problem-plagued 737 Max.
This change would not come with layoffs, he said.
Boeing is trying to fix problems with an anti-stall system that's been implicated in two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people on board. 737 Max jets were grounded after the latest crash in Ethiopia.
"We now know that the recent Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft's MCAS function," Muilenburg said in a press release.
"We have the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it," his statement continued. "As part of this effort, we're making progress on the 737 MAX software update that will prevent accidents like these from ever happening again."
During testing of the changes made to flight software and increased pilot training, Muilenburg said, that the company would downshift its production rate starting in mid-April. He said that the number of jobs in the 737 program and "related production" teams would be maintained at current levels.
The CEO added that he had asked Boeing's board of directors to form a committee to review "our company-wide policies and processes for the design and development of the airplanes we build" with an eye toward "assuring the highest level of safety" on the 737 Max program and others.
It's not clear when the jets will be cleared to return to service.
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Gil Aegerter
Gil edits feature pieces and helps guide staff reporters through their stories. He previously served as interim digital director and online managing editor at KUOW. Before that he spent seven years with NBCNews.com, where he was variously a senior editor, editor-producer and features editor. He also worked 25 years as a newspaper editor in Anchorage, Alaska, San Diego, Wilmington, N.C., and Seattle. He also was a freelance researcher for NBC Olympics for the Games in Atlanta; Sydney, Australia; Salt Lake City; Athens; and Torino, Italy. He is a graduate of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, with a degree in photojournalism.
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Sydney Brownstone
Reporter, Lost Patients
Sydney Brownstone is an investigative reporter at The Seattle Times. She previously covered homelessness in Seattle and was a Livingston Award finalist for her work on the podcast Outsiders. Brownstone hails from the world of alt-weeklies, where her reporting on sexual assault and sex work prompted the Washington Attorney General’s first-ever consumer protection lawsuit on behalf of sex workers.
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