“A moment of reckoning”: CEO David Calhoun defends Boeing’s safety record at Senate hearing

During a contentious Senate hearing on Tuesday, Boeing CEO David Calhoun, who assumed the role in 2020, defended the company’s safety record following two high-profile crashes and an incident in January when a 737 Max 9 lost a door panel mid-flight. According to the Associated Press, Calhoun began his remarks by apologizing to the families of the crash victims “for the grief we have caused,” noting Boeing’s commitment to focusing on safety. Some lawmakers, however, weren’t convinced by Calhoun’s rhetoric.

“You are cutting corners, you are eliminating safety procedures, you are sticking it to your employees, you are cutting back jobs because you are trying to squeeze every piece of profit you can out of this company,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said. “You are strip-mining Boeing.”

The subcommittee chairman, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., provided a slightly more muted assessment of the proceedings: “This hearing is a moment of reckoning. It’s about a company, a once iconic company, that somehow lost its way.”

While Calhoun said Boeing has slowed production since the January incident — and encourages employees to discuss safety concerns with their managers — the Senate subcommittee overseeing this investigation released a 204-page report just hours before the hearing. It included “new allegations from a whistleblower who said he worries that defective parts could be going into 737s.”

The whistleblower, Sam Mohawk, a quality assurance investigator at Boeing’s 737 assembly plant near Seattle, said he worried “noncomforming parts” were ending up in the aircraft and that Boeing had actively hid evidence from the Federal Aviation Administration.

While Boeing has been granted 90 days from the FAA to further develop a comprehensive plan to address “systemic quality-control issues,” Calhoun has indicated he plans to exit his role as CEO by the end of the year.