During a visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said that he was no longer planning on stepping down at the end of this year, as issues at the company require him to stick it through.
While speaking before the lawmakers and the families of victims of two 737 Max disasters from 2018 and 2019, Calhoun took on responsibility for installing a system that killed 364 people.
Despite this and his remarks from March about stepping down, Calhoun says that he sees no path forward that doesn’t include him staying put for the time being.
Calhoun was slammed by several Senators, including Josh Hawley (R-MO), who grilled him about taking a massive salary increase at the same time that his company faced regulatory pressure over its safety failures and attempts to hide them.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also took a turn grilling the airplane manufacturer’s CEO, saying that last January’s Alaska Airlines incident, which was the initial purpose for the hearing, was only the open door to a more vast issue with the company.
“This past January, the facade quite literally blew off the hollow shell that had been Boeing’s promises to the world,” Blumenthal said in prepared remarks. “And once that chasm was exposed, we learned that there was virtually no bottom to the void that lay below.”
Calhoun was also asked about his company’s treatment of whistleblowers, including longtime Boeing engineer John Barnett, who took his own life after coming forward about safety concerns, authorities said.
In response, Calhoun said that “something went wrong” and that Boeing had installed an ethics hotline and put a team in place to handle internal concerns. Still, he said that he had not met with any whistleblowers who have come forward but that he thought “it would be a good idea.”
Federal investigators with the FAA have continued looking into Boeing and its safety practices. Most recently, a report from The New York Times highlighted the company’s potential use of fake titanium.
The titanium was reportedly distributed by a company with fake documentation to both Boeing and Airbus, leading to questions about potential safety hazards and risks to the public.
Boeing has said that the parts come from a limited set of suppliers and that its testing shows the correct titanium alloy was used in its manufacturing.
However, investigations are still ongoing.