Boeing's CEO takes bipartisan heat in second 737 MAX hearing

Boeing’s CEO took a beating Wednesday during a hearing where lawmakers from both parties essentially called on him to resign over flaws with the 737 MAX that led to two crashes overseas in five months, killing a total of 346 people.

On the second day of hearings on the still-grounded plane, CEO Dennis Muilenburg repeatedly said he and Boeing have taken responsibility for mistakes the company made and frequently cited lessons learned during his childhood on an Iowa farm. He noted that he’d had his title of chairman of Boeing’s board stripped from him and that the head of the company’s commercial airplane division also left this month.

But that wasn’t enough for several lawmakers, who raked Muilenburg repeatedly for not resigning.

Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) said that if he was the CEO in this situation, “I would be submitting my letter of resignation to the board of directors because I’m responsible for it, ultimately. … Have you submitted or offered your letter of resignation to your board of directors?”

Muilenburg said he hadn’t. He said that growing up on the farm, his dad taught him “that you don’t run away from challenges.”

“And this is a challenging situation. My responsibility is to stick to it and to help our team work through it, and to get Boeing ready for the future,” Muilenburg said. “I feel a keen sense of responsibility to do that, and I’m confident that that’s what we’re going to do as a company.”

Several lawmakers also focused on Muilenburg being paid more than $23 million in 2018, which included a $13 million bonus, even after the first 737 MAX crash — an Indonesian Lion Air flight carrying 189 people.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who chairs the House Transportation Committee before which Muilenburg testified Wednesday, compared a $100 million fund Boeing has set up for families and communities following the crashes to the money Muilenburg himself received.

“You’re telling us there’s been consequences, you’re responsible, and yet these families will get 1 percent of what you get paid, and you talk a lot about your upbringing as a farm boy, I appreciate that,” DeFazio said. “You’re no longer an Iowa farm boy, you are the CEO of the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, you’re earning a heck of a lot of money, and so far the consequence to you has been, ‘Oh, you’re not chairman of the board anymore.’”

“I haven’t seen convincingly that there have been consequences, except one guy got fired and the leader of the 737 program retired in disgust because he wouldn’t want to put his family on the airplane,” DeFazio said.

Fireworks aside, it’s still unclear what, if anything, lawmakers will ultimately do to change the way the FAA certifies airplanes or the delegation system that allows airplane manufacturers to carry out many certification duties themselves, with FAA oversight.

Democrats in particular have suggested that some changes to the certification process are a must, but so far it’s an open question about whether Republicans will go along.

Both DeFazio and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), the chairman of the House Transportation aviation panel, have suggested that the “delegation” program needs some changes, including possibly bulking up the FAA’s oversight workforce.

But on Wednesday, Republicans mostly projected a desire to not act too quickly, and instead wait for the myriad ongoing probes into just what went wrong to return their findings.

"I’ve said before many times … if these investigations reveal problems with certification, then I think Congress should act to fix those specific and identifiable problems," said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), who is also a pilot with a commercial rating. "That’s going to be the issue is identifying what those problems are."

After the hearing, Muilenburg had to navigate another gauntlet: the family members of crash victims, who had attended the hearing.

Nadia Milleron, whose daughter died in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, confronted Muilenburg, suggesting he should "go back to the farm."

"You talked about Iowa just like one too many times," Milleron told Muilenburg after the hearing had finished. "And the whole group said, 'Go back to the farm. Go back to Iowa. Do that.'"

Milleron continued, saying "when you make mistakes like that and you can acknowledge them, then maybe someone else should do that work."

Muilenburg then reiterated what he had said during the hearing. "What I learned from my father in Iowa is when things happen on your watch, you have to own it," he told Milleron. "In the end, it's about safety."

"Even if you're not capable of doing that?" Milleron countered.

"I respect your inputs there," Muilenburg said. "You have my commitment — my personal commitment and the commitment of our company — that we're going to make the safety improvements we need to make and that we're going to prevent accidents like this from happening again."

"Transparency. Thank you," Milleron said.