In five-hour grilling over 737 MAX crashes, House panel reveals Boeing memos and calls on CEO Muilenburg to resign
Another document showed that this catastrophic potential was reiterated in a presentation to the
Those revelations set the stage for an intense five-hour grilling of
The hearing was punctuated by repeated calls by members of the
"I think it's pretty clear to me, to the families of the victims and to the American public that you should resign and do it immediately," said Rep.
With the new evidence displayed on slides in front of Muilenburg, the hearing turned into a relentless critique of
"The design of MCAS was fatally flawed," said Rep.
During the hearing, Rep.
Muilenburg had previously admitted that an angle-of-attack warning light didn't work due to a software glitch. On Wednesday he also acknowledged that the overall architecture of the failed flight-control system was a mistake, as was the lack of information provided to pilots and airlines about the system.
Though Muilenburg repeated several times that "the only sustainable business model for
"The way I see it, your relentless focus on stock price and your company's bottom line may have negatively affected employee performance," said Garcia. "It's pretty clear there has been a culture of greed and compromising safety at
Members took turns pounding Muilenburg on the lack of redundancy in the flight-control software implicated in the crashes -- the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) -- which was triggered by a single faulty angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor.
They also drilled into a batch of 2016 emails to FAA officials from the 737 chief technical pilot
Forkner justified that decision in his emails to the FAA by saying that MCAS "only operates WAY outside of the normal operating envelope." Under questioning, Muilenburg and his chief engineer
Muilenburg could only repeat that Forkner has left
Rep.
Committee members noted that
Muilenburg acknowledged that when
But he insisted that "we don't make training decisions based on economics." The panel members were not convinced.
"It's the purposeful concealment that bothers so many of us, with an obvious financial drive behind it," said Rep.
Muilenburg was blasted for taking home
"You are driving profit," said Rep.
In a separate revelation unrelated to the flight-control system, one congressman read out a whistleblower letter written in
"Employees are fatigued from having to work at a very high pace for an extended period of time. ... Fatigued employees make mistakes," the manager wrote. "Schedule pressure (combined with fatigue) is creating a culture where employees are either deliberately or unconsciously circumventing established processes.
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"Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off," the manager wrote. "And for the first time in my life, I'm sorry to say that I'm hesitant about putting my family on a
Muilenburg acknowledged receiving this complaint and said the company took action to address some of the concerns. But he conceded that the production rate had not been lowered.
Committee chairman
New evidence
Facing this lacerating criticism and the calls for his resignation, Muilenburg said he won't step down.
Recalling his upbringing, he said, "I feel responsible to see this through ... I grew up on a farm in
Yet regarding the deficiencies in
DeFazio displayed an
The memo, written after the MAX was already in passenger service, is the first indication that anyone within
Based on the faulty assumption, the catastrophic scenario was dismissed and never raised outside the company.
"I cannot speak to this document," Muilenburg said.
DeFazio also presented a
Hamilton said he wasn't aware of the document but said it was evidence of an open culture in which engineers could raise questions.
One more engineering memo, from
* "MCAS failures shall be annunciated to the flight crew."
* MCAS shall not have any objectionable interaction with the piloting of the airplane."
* MCAS shall not interfere with dive recovery."
MCAS clearly didn't meet these requirements.
Hard questioning
Unlike the
Larsen questioned Muilenburg's Tuesday statement to the
Both
DeFazio then directly challenged the CEO's statement, citing the findings this month of an investigation by a group of international regulators that although "the FAA was not completely unaware of MCAS ... the information and discussions about MCAS were so fragmented and were delivered to disconnected groups within the process, it was difficult to recognize the impacts and implications of this system."
Meeting the bereaved families
Muilenburg met with the families of crash victims Tuesday night after his session in the
"We wanted to listen," he said with a stricken look. "Each of the families told us the stories about the lives that were lost. Those were heartbreaking. I'll never forget that."
During the hearing, DeFazio asked Muilenburg about
"Seriously? You don't know that as a fact?" he asked. "You're telling me that you don't know your legal strategy in regards to
As the hearing ended and Muilenburg got up to leave, he was approached by
As Muilenburg paused, Milleron told him the family members as a group had heard him mention his humble upbringing on an
She said the group's unanimous response was that Muilenburg should "go back to the farm" and let someone else take over fixing the MAX crisis.
"Go back to
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