A Boeing 787 at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport
Boeing announced on Wednesday a leadership shakeup in its commercial airplanes unit. The move comes on the heels of the mid-air blowout of a door plug last month from a 737 Max 9 jet.
The head of the airplane maker’s 737 Max program, Ed Clark, is leaving the company with immediate effect, Stan Deal, the unit’s CEO, announced in a memorandum to employees.
The shakeup comes as the Chicago-based company is under pressure from its customers, namely airlines as well as lawmakers in Washington to prove it can make safe airplanes.
On January 5, 2024, the mid-air blowout of a door plug left a hole in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that was en route from Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles. The incident occurred at approximately 16,000 feet while the aircraft was still climbing, and no one was seriously injury. The incident could have been far more catastrophic had it occurred at cruising altitude.
The incident took place because four bolts designed to prevent the door plug from falling off the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane were missing before the plug blew off, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report of the incident released earlier in the month.
This was far from the only 737 Max-related problem that has arisen. Indeed, the Alaska Airlines incident was the latest in a string of events that began in 2018 and 2019 with two hull losses of brand new 737 Max jets that crashed within six months of one another. The death toll from the two incidents was 344.
Meanwhile, in December, a foreign operator of the type discovered loose bolts in the rudder control system on one of its planes, and
Boeing is taking steps to ensure that nothing of this or greater magnitude ever happens again.
Boeing announced additional leadership changes including naming Katie Ringgold, previously in charge of 737 deliveries, to take over the 737 Max program, and Elizabeth Lund, who headed the unit’s plane programs, would assume on a new role in which she would oversee quality across all of the company’s commercial airplanes. Mike Fleming, who oversaw the Max’s return to service after the two hull losses, will succeed Lund, and Don Ruhmann will assume Fleming’s former role as vice president of development programs.
Clark, the outgoing Max program head, had joined the unit just as Boeing was accelerating production of the 737 Max, which had been grounded across the globe for 20 months following the two fatal crashes, which cost Boeing billions of dollars and caused tremendous damage to its reputation.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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