5 questions that could shape Boeing’s future

Boeing has navigated turbulent skies since the door plug of one of the company’s 737 Max 9 jetliners blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

The aviation giant is deeply enmeshed in the fabric of aviation in the United States. Two out of every three planes flying in the U.S. are made by Boeing, CEO David Calhoun told a Senate subcommittee last week, and the company rakes in billions of dollars from the federal government each year, primarily from the Department of Defense. 

But the high-profile accident and a tranche of whistleblower allegations of manufacturing missteps, mishandled faulty parts and retaliation have raised concerns about the prominent planemaker’s commitment to put safety and quality over profits. 

“What’s happened is for 20 or more years now the management of this company has strip-mined it and tried to sell it for parts,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told The Hill. 

“They have cut corners, they have cut costs, they have not given their workers raises, they outsourced everything they could, they tried to squeeze the profits out of it. And the result of that is their planes are literally falling out of the sky.”

Hawley and a bipartisan group of senators grilled Calhoun last week during a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on the company’s “broken” safety culture, his first public testimony since the Alaska Airlines blowout. 

“From the beginning, we took responsibility and cooperated transparently with the NTSB and the [Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)] in their respective investigations. In our factories and in our supply chain, we took immediate action to ensure the specific circumstances that led to this accident would not happen again,” Calhoun said in his opening statement.

The Department of Justice is also weighing whether to charge the company for violating a 2021 settlement agreement related to two fatal crashes involving Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliners in 2018 and 2019.

Amid the threat of federal prosecution and intense regulatory scrutiny, these five questions could shape the future of Boeing — and its legacy.

Boeing declined to comment.

What is Boeing doing differently?

After an FAA audit identified multiple “non-compliance issues in Boeing’s manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control,” the regulator gave Boeing 90 days to develop a comprehensive quality and safety overhaul.

Boeing presented its plan to invest in workforce training, simplify its processes, eliminate defects and promote a culture of safety and quality on May 30.

The plan includes an additional 300 hours of training material, the deployment of “workplace coaches and peer trainers” onto production lines and more time for managers to spend on factory floors.

Boeing also proposed quality inspection and approval of 737 fuselages before they are shipped out, reestablishing daily compliance sweeps, a pilot program to cut down on traveled work and simplifying hundreds of quality-related commands to remove redundancies and contradictions.

The company also said it ordered around 7,500 new tools and equipment. 

“We are confident in the plan that we have put forward and are committed to continuously improving. We will work under the FAA’s oversight and uphold our responsibility to the flying public to continue delivering safe, high-quality airplanes,” Stephanie Pope, Boeing’s chief operating officer and a contender for CEO after Calhoun steps down at the end of the year, said in a May 30 statement.

Did Boeing’s safety plan meet the FAA’s expectations?

FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee earlier this month that the delivery of the plan marked “beginning of the next chapter of ensuring implementation and a renewed focus on safety at Boeing.” 

“Boeing developed its corrective action plan with detailed input from the FAA throughout the process,” an FAA spokesperson told The Hill.

“We will make sure they follow through on all corrective actions, that their fixes are effective, and that they have the right tools in place to sustain those changes in the long term.” 

The FAA has also proposed several tangible steps to hold Boeing to its mission during the next chapter.

“We have added more safety inspectors in the Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems facilities, and we will maintain our increased on-site presence for the foreseeable future,” the FAA spokesperson said. 

The regulator also plans to have a team of FAA subject matter experts continually review Boeing’s progress toward its goals, hold weekly meetings between Boeing and senior FAA officials to go over performance metrics and any challenges, and spend more time talking to actual employees about how the changes are going.

“Systemic change isn’t easy but in this case is absolutely necessary, and the work is never really done when it comes to the safety of the flying public – from Boeing, airlines, or the FAA. But we will hold the company accountable every step of the way to make sure these changes happen,” Whitaker said in a May 30 statement. 

Can Boeing change its ‘broken’ safety culture?

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations argued there is a “broken” safety culture at Boeing during its hearing last week and emphasized the stakes the planemaker faces as it turns to the future.

“We’re here because we want Boeing to succeed. Boeing needs to succeed for the sake of the jobs it provides, for the sake of local economies it supports, for the sake of the American traveling public, for the sake of our military,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee, said in his opening remarks.

While Boeing has laid out its plan to overhaul its safety and quality culture, and the FAA has committed to enforcing those changes, allegations from multiple whistleblowers have raised questions about the company’s commitment to and ability to implement the proposed reforms. 

Will more whistleblowers come forward?

Multiple whistleblowers have accused Boeing of cutting corners to boost profits and retaliating against employees who spoke up. Blumenthal released a new whistleblower allegation hours before Calhoun testified last week.

Sam Mohawk, a Boeing quality assurance inspector in Renton, Wash., alleged the company mishandled hundreds of faulty parts that may have been installed in airplanes including the 737 Max. He also said he was retaliated against when he raised concerns.

“The culture of Boeing is fine when it comes to the employees. The problem is the C-suite,” said Hawley, whose home state of Missouri is home to nearly 17,000 Boeing workers, according to the company website.

Blumenthal told The Hill he continues to hear from whistleblowers. 

“We’re talking right now. We want to be sure that whatever we release is credible and authentic,” Blumenthal said.

Will the Justice Department prosecute Boeing? 

The Justice Department (DOJ) may soon bring criminal charges against Boeing for violating a settlement that allowed the company and its executives to avoid prosecution after 346 people died in two separate Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019.

In 2021, federal prosecutors charged Boeing with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. after the company failed to inform the FAA about issues with its Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System software, which played a key role in both crashes.

But in the same statement, the DOJ said it would defer the prosecution after the company agreed to pay a $2.5 billion fine, including $500 million that would go to the family and beneficiaries of crash victims.

The DOJ said last month that Boeing had violated that agreement “by failing to design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”

The department has until next Sunday, July 7, to decide whether to prosecute Boeing. Reuters reported Sunday that federal prosecutors are recommending the DOJ bring criminal charges.

Families of victims of the 2018 and 2019 crashed urged federal prosecutors last week to bring “aggressive criminal prosecution” against Boeing.

“Because Boeing’s crime is the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history, a maximum fine of more than $24 billion is legally justified and clearly appropriate, although it might be partially suspended if funds that would otherwise be paid are devoted to appropriate quality control and safety measures,” wrote Paul Cassell, who represents some of the victims’ families.

Updated at 10:07 a.m.