Boeing is apologizing for emails that show 737 MAX test pilots expressing contempt for regulators, airlines and co-workers. The test pilots struggled with regulators and airlines to present the plane as a simple upgrade that wouldn't require pilots to practice on a simulator.
“Looks like my Jedi mind trick worked again!” one wrote when he succeeded.
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Complex systems and faulty software have been blamed for two 737 MAX crashes that killed more than 300 people.
Another Boeing employee said, “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”
“I literally was shaking my head and rolling my eyes,” said the Leeham Company’s Scott Hamilton, one of the nation’s top Boeing analysts.
“It’s the open contempt showed to regulators, it’s the open contempt showed towards its own customers. It’s frankly the open contempt shown towards its own employees."
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Another email asks, “Would you put your family on a MAX simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.”
“The danger really is, this is just another in restoring confidence in the MAX and rebuilding the Boeing brand.”
North Sound Congressman Rick Larsen reacted this morning.
“These emails are really not coming out in a drip, drip, drip. They’re coming out as downpours.”
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In a statement, Boeing apologized and said the appropriate action will be taken. As bad as they are, Hamilton doubts the emails will hold up final approval for the MAX to fly again.
But that it won't come in time to prevent 28002,800 people from being laid-off off at the Wichita plant that makes the 737 MAX fuselages.
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“This is a lot of employees venting and I’m not sure that anything that’s been vented here is anything the FAA doesn’t already know.”