During Boeing’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Dave Calhoun took full responsibility for the incident involving a Boeing door plug being blown out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Oregon earlier in the month.
Calhoun acknowledged, “We caused the problem,” emphasizing that his primary focus was on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 and the steps Boeing is taking to regain the trust of customers, regulators, and the flying public.
“Boeing is accountable for what happened,” Calhoun asserted. He stressed that regardless of the specific cause of the accident, such incidents should not occur on airplanes leaving their factories, emphasizing the need for improvement. Calhoun expressed the company’s commitment to providing better quality and service to its customers.
Anticipating results from the National Transportation Safety Board investigation soon, Calhoun outlined several measures Boeing has implemented. These include additional quality controls and inspections, bulletins to suppliers emphasizing performance focus and reducing the risk of quality issues, allowing 737 operators additional oversight by opening factories, appointing a quality adviser for a comprehensive and independent review, and a one-day pause in 737 production for unprecedented quality-related adjustments.
In a bid to encourage transparency, Calhoun announced plans to reward employees for speaking up. Despite the recent incident, Boeing will maintain its current production scale of 38 737s per month due to restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Calhoun refrained from providing a financial outlook for 2024, stating, “Now is not the time for that.” Boeing reported $22 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter and $77 billion in total for the year 2023.
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Notably, Alaska Airlines resumed flying the Boeing 737 Max 9 after conducting fleet inspections for the first time on Friday.
