Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun, along with other company leaders, hosted an employee meeting Jan. 9 devoted to the importance of safety and how every detail matters.
The FAA on Jan. 6 ordered the temporary grounding of certain Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines. This was after a Jan. 5 incident on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in which a door plug dislodged from the aircraft at roughly 16,000 feet and several passengers sustained injuries.
An FAA update on Jan. 9 said: "Every Boeing 737-9 Max with a plug door will remain grounded until the FAA finds each can safely return to operation. To begin this process, Boeing must provide instructions to operators for inspections and maintenance. Boeing offered an initial version of instructions yesterday which they are now revising because of feedback received in response. Upon receiving the revised version of instructions from Boeing the FAA will conduct a thorough review.
"The safety of the flying public, not speed, will determine the timeline for returning the Boeing 737-9 Max to service."
Addressing Boeing employees, Calhoun noted his comments were not a lecture.
“It’s nothing more than a reminder of the seriousness with which we have to approach our work,” he said.
Calhoun talked about the approach he and other team members are taking:
"We’re going to approach this, No. 1 ackowledging our mistake. We are going to approach it with 100 percent complete transparency every step of the way. We are going to work with the NTSB, who is investigating the accident itself to find out what the root cause is. I’ve had a long experience with this group. They’re as good as it gets. I trust every step they’ll take and they will get to a conclusion. The FAA, who has to now deal with airline customers who want their airplanes back in service safely and to make sure all the procedures are put in place, inspections, all the readiness actions that are required to ensure every next airplane that moves into the sky is in fact safe and that this event can never happen again.
"We have a communications task with all of our customers. Moments like this shake them to the bone… They have confidence in all of us. They do and they will again. But we’re going to have to demonstrate it by our actions, our willingness to work directly and transparently with them. And to make sure they understand that every airplane that Boeing has it’s name on in the sky is in fact safe. And we will see our way through that. But we need to know that we’re starting from a very anxious moment with our customers."
A portion of the webcast to employees is available on the Boeing website.
When the meeting was announced Sunday, the following information was shared publicly:
Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun invited all employees to join a company-wide webcast focused on Safety, to be hosted on Tuesday, January 9 from Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash. In his message, Calhoun said:
“When it comes to the safety of our products and services, every decision and every action matters. And when serious accidents like this occur, it is critical for us to work transparently with our customers and regulators to understand and address the causes of the event, and to ensure they don’t happen again. This is and must be the focus of our team right now. I am deeply grateful to our colleagues who have been working tirelessly on our company’s response over the past two days.
We will spend time together Tuesday talking about our company’s response to this accident, and reinforcing our focus on and our commitment to safety, quality, integrity and transparency. While we’ve made progress in strengthening our safety management and quality control systems and processes in the last few years, situations like this are a reminder that we must remain focused on continuing to improve every day.”
