Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a day after questioning Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg during his Senate testimony, said Wednesday she believes the problems surrounding the aeronautics giant's 737 MAX were a combination of structural problems, communications difficulties, and a cultural issue inside the company itself.
"As you well know, every corporation has a culture," the Tennessee Republican told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "They have a culture that seems to permeate through this company as to what their value set is."
Blackburn said that in her opinion, it seemed as if Boeing was trying to rush the 737 MAX into the marketplace, and "even though there were concerns from its chief technical pilot and from highly skilled test pilots, that was not communicated to the leadership of the company."
"The emails that have been revealed, and the text messages, have shown that there was that communication issue and then transmission of that information," said Blackburn.
She added that it will be up to the shareholders whether to force Muilenburg to step down, but she is "incredibly concerned" about what transpired with the situation, considering 346 people died in the planes' crashes.
The Boeing hearings, considered the highest-profile commercial aviation safety scrutiny in several years, is adding to the pressure on the reconfigured Boeing senior management team to regain trust with airline passengers and customers, after an eight-month safety ban on the aircraft following the crashes.
Muilenburg admitted that there had been mistakes in failing to give pilots more information on the MCAS stall-prevention system linked to the two deadly crashes, and in taking several months to reveal that it had made an alarm optional that alerts pilots to a mismatch on flight data.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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