Boeing Co provided a fresh batch of incriminating documents on the 737 MAX to US regulators and congressional investigators, only hours after announcing a leadership shake-up, officials confirmed on Tuesday.
The document dump came just before Christmas, when many officials already are on holiday, and “appear to point to a very disturbing picture” about Boeing’s response to safety issues regarding the 737 MAX, a congressional aide told reporters in an e-mail.
The aide said Boeing sent the documents “late in the evening” on Monday to congressional staff investigating the issues with the aircraft, which has been grounded since March following two crashes that killed 346 people.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that it received what appear to be the same documents on Monday afternoon, a few hours after Boeing ousted Dennis Muilenburg as chief executive amid his much-criticized handling of the MAX crisis.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson in October ripped Boeing after it only provided the agency with revealing documents months after unearthing the records.
In one text message exchange that surfaced in those documents, a Boeing pilot described a problem on a simulator with a flight handling system that has been implicated in both crashes.
The aide with the US House Transportation Committee declined to release the latest papers on Tuesday and said committee staff were still reviewing the documents.
“The records appear to point to a very disturbing picture of both concerns expressed by Boeing employees about the company’s commitment to safety and efforts by some employees to ensure Boeing’s production plans were not diverted by regulators or others,” the aide said.
The panel is led by Democratic US Representative Peter DeFazio, who grilled Boeing executives at an October hearing at which some lawmakers called for Muilenburg to resign.
DeFazio on Monday called Muilenburg’s ouster “long overdue,” and said the company “made a number of devastating decisions that suggest profit took priority over safety.”
Boeing said it “proactively” contacted the FAA and the US Congress “as part of our commitment to transparency,” a company spokesman said in an e-mail. “As with prior documents referenced by the committee, the tone and content of some of these communications does not reflect the company we are and need to be.”
The spokesman also highlighted changes Boeing has made “in the past nine months to enhance our safety processes, organization and culture.”
That references the period after the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March. The first 737 MAX crash of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia happened five months earlier.
The latest revelations make it clear that despite shaking up its leadership, Boeing would continue to face questions well into next year over the actions that led to the crashes as it tries to win approval to return the MAX to service and to restore its damaged reputation.
Boeing shares fell 1.3 percent to US$333 at the close in New York, as markets shut down early because of Christmas Eve.
The management shake-up at the company drew muted response from Wall Street analysts, a bombshell that came only days after the company took the monumental step of halting production on the 737 MAX and a day after it suffered a setback on a high-profile NASA mission.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch said it had “mixed feelings” in light of Calhoun’s lengthy tenure on the Boeing board.
“We wonder if appointing from within, especially an insider that has been with the company for 10 years, signals more of the same from Boeing vs an outside appointee who may have offered more of a change of pace and culture,” the bank said in a commentary.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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