- Former Boeing senior manager Ed Pearson criticized the company, airlines and regulators over the 737 Max issue.
- He told BI that Alaska Airlines “ignored” his warning that the airline would ground the jets in April 2023.
- Pearson called on investors to demand a new management team, saying executives were “ruining the company.”
A Boeing whistleblower slammed the manufacturer, airlines and regulators' response to the 737 Max problems in a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider.
Ed Pearson is a former senior manager at Boeing who testified before Congress in 2019 amid the fallout from two Max 8 crashes that killed 346 people.
Boeing's newest narrowbody jet is once again under intense scrutiny after a Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines lost its door plug mid-air on January 5th. All 171 of these jets with door plugs were subsequently grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration for more than 40 days.
Pearson told BI that he looked into Alaska Airlines' operational distress reports, which can cover a wide range of defects and malfunctions, and tried to warn Alaska Airlines months before the incident.
He said he sent a letter to Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci in April 2023 saying: “There were a lot of red flags that said the aircraft might not be safe, and I recommended that he ground it.”
“We sent them a return receipt and they ignored it,” Pearson added.
Alaska Airlines did not respond to BI's request for comment on Pearson's letter.
Several airline executives, including Minicucci, have criticized Boeing since the explosion. But Mr Pearson said airlines were “a big part of the problem”.
Airline CEOs also say they have confidence in Boeing executives. Pearson pointed out that Airbus still has to deal with manufacturers. Airbus doesn't have the capacity to build everyone's planes.
“Who on earth is piloting this ship?”
Pearson said his job also included overseeing a team that responded to issues with Boeing's quality control processes. He retired in 2018, two months before the Max 8's first crash.
He believes all 737 Max jets should be grounded due to production issues.
In its preliminary report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, the National Transportation Safety Board said four critical bolts designed to secure the door plugs were not installed when the plane left a Boeing factory.
“This is a symptom of a larger problem: unsafe manufacturing processes,” Pearson told BI.
He pointed to a safety waiver application filed by Boeing in December and later withdrawn after the explosion.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Max jet's engine anti-icing system could cause the engine to overheat, causing debris to break off and hit the plane, causing it to lose control. Boeing said in its request that such a scenario is “extremely unlikely.”
Pearson said Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun was “pushing the system to its breaking point” by sending planes “through the factory at breakneck speed” and overworking employees. Stated.
In the wake of the explosion, the FAA halted production expansion of the 737 Max until Boeing was satisfied with its quality controls. According to CNN, Boeing produces 38 of these jets a month, down from his 59 before the grounding of the Max 8 in 2019.
“Investors should be outraged that these failures are occurring and are putting the very future of this company at risk,” Pearson said.
“I believe in the people at Boeing. What I don't believe in is their senior leadership,” Pearson told BI. “I think their senior leadership is terrible.”
He said executives had “zero understanding” of what was going on inside the factory, noting that it was far from the company's headquarters. The 737 is manufactured near Seattle, but the company's headquarters are in Arlington, Virginia.
Pearson also noted that Boeing's CEO commutes from his home in New Hampshire on a private jet. The Wall Street Journal previously reported this, adding that an employee mocked Calhoun with a souvenir mug.
“If you add all of this up, you're going to say, 'Who the heck is steering this ship?'” Pearson said.
“That's why we've been saying that Boeing's leadership needs to step down,” he added. “Shareholders need to fire the board of directors, they need to fire the executives, because they're going to put the company out of business.”
The Federal Aviation Administration announced the findings of its investigation into Boeing on Monday. The report said there was “a disconnect between Boeing's senior management and the rest of the organization regarding safety culture.”
Boeing declined to comment on Pearson's remarks.
What is the FAA doing?
“The FAA is woefully slumbering in its oversight responsibilities here,” Pearson said. “It's much safer to help find these problems in the factory than to wait until they leave the factory and run away, which could lead to a potentially tragic situation.”
“The FAA has significantly improved its mission and aircraft certification processes in recent years to address concerns about the quality of aircraft manufactured by Boeing and its suppliers in the wake of the January 5 Alaska Airlines door plug incident,” the representative said. We took immediate action to do so.”
The FAA sent “approximately 20” safety inspectors to inspect the production lines of Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems.
This includes “all elements and stations” of the production system. How Boeing moves suppliers' unfinished work onto its own production line. and employee training and qualifications.
But Mr Pearson said the number of inspectors was “completely insufficient to carry out the task”.
The FAA pointed to several other actions, including an investigation into Boeing's failure to maintain quality systems in accordance with regulations and “increased data monitoring to identify emerging risks.”
Pearson believes not enough is being done to improve Boeing, saying, “We are moving ever closer to another avoidable disaster.”
