Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg assured President Trump on Tuesday that the planemaker’s new 737 MAX is safe, despite two crashes in the past six months and the chief executive’s observation on Twitter that jetliners are becoming too complex for pilots to fly.
The two spoke by phone after a morning tweet in which Trump said modern aircraft are rendered dangerous by increasing reliance on digital technology, Boeing confirmed. The Chicago-based company declined to provide details of the conversation beyond Muilenburg’s reiteration of the planemaker’s confidence in the reliability of the airliner — its best-selling model ever.
The Federal Aviation Administration says it has no facts from an investigation into the Sunday crash of a 737-8 Max flown by Ethiopian Airlines that would warrant sidelining the plane, though the European Union and countries from China to the U.K. and Australia have already done so and many passengers have expressed concern about flying on the model. Trump is monitoring the situation closely, a senior administration official said.
Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2019
On Capitol Hill, a number of senators, including former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said the agency should follow the example of its global counterparts.
“Today, immediately, the FAA should get those planes out of the sky,” added Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat seeking her party’s nomination to run against President Trump next year. “The world has now witnessed the second tragic crash of one of these planes in less than six months. While we do not know the causes of these crashes, serious questions have been raised.”
Bound for Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, the Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed shortly after its takeoff from Addis Ababa on Sunday, killing all 157 people aboard. The flight was commanded by Yared Getachew, a senior captain with more than 8,000 flight hours, according to the carrier, and the aircraft itself had returned from Johannesburg, South Africa, earlier Sunday morning.
“All data will be closely examined during this investigation, and the FAA will take appropriate action if the data indicates the need to do so,” the agency said in a notice to 737-8 operators worldwide on Monday. Its position hadn’t changed as of Tuesday evening, and the two largest U.S. airlines to purchase the Max s are continuing to fly it.
The previous crash in Indonesia, in late October, occurred after an “input error” involving a sensor designed to keep the Lion Air jetliner from ascending so rapidly that it stalls. The error forced the plane downward too quickly for the pilot to compensate, authorities said, and its 189 occupants all perished. U.S. regulators required airlines last fall to update operations manuals on the handling of such issues.
“I see it all the time in many products, always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when old and simpler is far better,” said Trump, who has dinged Boeing via Twitter in the past — once about the price of Air Force One. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane.”
Although Boeing has received orders for more than 4,600 of the 737 Max jets, fewer than 400 are in operation worldwide so far, which means regulators can sideline them with less disruption to commercial air travel than would be the case with an older and more widely-flown model.
Boeing began developing the upgrade to its airline-industry workhorse in 2011, as rival Airbus raked in rapid orders for a more fuel-efficient version of its competing A320. The first Max was delivered in 2017.
