Boeing will be busy this week, as the company’s chief executive gears up to testify before a Senate committee and as Boeing attorneys work through civil and criminal cases related to the 737 Max.
CEO Kelly Ortberg is scheduled to be the lone witness testifying on 2 April during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transformation.
Titled “Safety First: Restoring Boeing’s Status as a Great American Manufacturer”, Ortberg is to discuss and answer questions about actions Boeing has taken to “address production deficiencies and safety issues identified after the Alaska Airlines flight 1282 incident last year”, the committee says.
Boeing has been under intense regulatory scrutiny following that incident, which involved the in-flight failure of an Alaska Airlines’ 737 Max 9’s mid-cabin door plug. Investigators traced the incident to failure by Boeing staff to install four bolts intended to secure the plug.
The pilots landed the jet safely and without serious injuries to passengers or crew, but the event made clear Boeing had not adequately addressed quality and safety problems at its Renton manufacturing site.
The hearing comes as Boeing’s legal struggles continue.
Last week, judge Reed O’Connor with US District Court for the Northern District of Texas set a 23 June start date for Boeing’s criminal trial on charges that it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the 737 Max’s certification.
In doing so, the judge essentially placed a deadline on what have been protracted negotiations between the company and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) over a possible guilty plea.
Boeing and the DOJ had last year reached a previous guilty plea deal, but judge O’Connor in December rejected that agreement, partly because it required that a compliance monitor charged with overseeing Boeing be selected based on criteria including “diversity and inclusion”.
The judge said such criteria could prioritise a monitor’s race at the possible expense of competency.
Since then, O’Connor had granted Boeing and the DOJ three extensions of deadlines by which they were required to wrap up their negotiations. He had done so at the urging of the company and the government.
Having a trial date set does not mean a plea agreement is off the table. Rather, the trial gives the company and DOJ a firm deadline and indicates the judge is through with extensions, says Paul Cassell, an attorney representing families of victims killed by two 737 Max 8 crashes.
Cassell has been arguing that the new plea deal, unlike the last, specifically link Boeing’s fraud to the deaths of the 346 crash victims.
To drive home that point, Cassell in February requested a meeting with new US attorney general Pam Bondi, though Cassell says no such meeting has been granted.
Separately, Boeing continues working through civil lawsuits filed against it by attorneys for crash victims. One such trial, in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, is scheduled to start on 7 April, though previous related civilian cases have been settled ahead of trials.
