Boeing execs defend safety decisions on 737 MAX development

Washington

Two senior Boeing Co executives who oversaw the development of the 737 MAX defended the company's decisions on a key cockpit system later tied to two fatal crashes.

According to testimony before congressional investigators seen by Reuters, Michael Teal, the 737 MAX chief product engineer, and Keith Leverkuhn, who was vice president and general manager of the 737 MAX program, were questioned separately by investigators for the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in May.

“I don’t consider the development of the airplane to be a failure,” Leverkuhn told investigators for the House panel that is to release a final report next week on its investigation into the development of the plane, grounded since March 2019 after two crashes killed 346 people.

Leverkuhn defended the decision to tie a new safety system on the MAX, called MCAS, to a single sensor that has been implicated in both fatal crashes. Boeing has since agreed to use data from two separate sensors when the plane returns to service, which could come as early as this year.