Calhoun: Boeing has to demonstrate our aircraft are safe

Boeing will have to demonstrate that our aircraft are safe to fly and that accidents like that with Alaska Airlines AS1282 on Friday will not happen again. That’s the main task President and CEO David Calhoun has set out, he said during a speech for employees in Renton on Tuesday afternoon.

“We have a communications task with all of our customers. Moments like this shake them to the bone, just like it shook me. They have confidence in all of us. They do, and they will again. But we will have to demonstrate it, by our actions, by our willingness to work. We will see our way through that. But we need to know we are starting from a very anxious moment with our customers. We simply have to deal with that reality,” Calhoun said about the MAX 9 fallout.

Calhoun added in the speech, of which Boeing shared a heavily edited 5-minute version online, that Boeing has to be very transparent. “When we have an accident, for a moment it suggests that there is a safety issue of any kind in any fleet. The fleet then belongs to Mike (Delaney, Chief Safety Officer) Mike and his team are the only people in the company who can give the go-ahead to move airplanes back into the air. That’s the way we are organized.”