Boeing's (NYSE: BA) new CEO will start his new job on Monday with a lot of work to do. Last week, Boeing released a round of documents, some of which show alarming language on the part of those engineering and defending the Boeing 737 Max. This was the plane involved in two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019 resulting in the deaths of 346 people. The 737 Max is currently grounded pending Federal Aviation Administration approval, which could come as early as this spring. In fact, several airlines are already booking flights on the controversial aircraft.
The documents released by Boeing include emails and internal communications. There are several messages mocking the FAA and more expressing distrust of the safety of the 737 Max and ridicule for those who designed it.
"This airplane is designed by clowns who are in turn supervised by monkeys," one employee said.
Many of the concerns expressed by employees had to do with the company's Max flight simulator which they suggest misled regulators. "I still haven't been forgiven by God for the cover up I did last year," wrote one employee about the role they played in giving misleading information to the FAA in 2017.
There are also haunting messages calling into doubt the safety of the Max long before the two deadly crashes.
"Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't," one employee said to another. The response? "No."
House Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio said these internal communications "paint a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was apparently willing to go to in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews, and the flying public, even as its own employees were sounding alarms internally."
Boeing willingly and knowingly handed over these documents which they say were written by a small number of employees. But this isn't the first time this sort of damning communication has come out regarding the Max. Last October, new evidence was released showing messages between Boeing's then-chief technical pilot for the 737, Mark Forkner, and another technical pilot, Patrik Gustavsson. The messages, which came out 2 years before the first crash, read "there are still some real fundamental issues" with systems on the aircraft that he says Boeing test pilots and engineers "claim they are unaware of." "I'm outraged," DeFazio said at the time these messages came out, October 2019, and called them a "smoking gun." The FAA called the exchange of messages "concerning".
Now, in 2020, the FAA is working with Boeing to certify the Max. They say they are "following a thorough process for returning the Boeing 737 MAX to passenger service." It appears that this new evidence will not effect that process as "nothing in the submission pointed to any safety risks that were not already identified as part of the ongoing review," the FAA said in a statement. They did call the language in the documents "disappointing".
A Boeing Official, meanwhile, said that the newly revealed internal communications "are inconsistent with Boeing values, and the company is taking appropriate action in response."
Some of the employees who sent messages shown on the most recent documents were also a part of the conversation revealed at the end of 2019. At least one of them has even gone on to work for one of Boeing's top customers: Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV). When this was discovered at the end of 2019, Southwest said they were unaware of the messages but that they stood as "more evidence that Boeing misled pilots, government regulators and other aviation experts about the safety of the 737 MAX."
Southwest had 34 Max in its fleet when the grounding was announced. They have since reached an agreement with Boeing for compensation to cover losses caused by the planes grounding. The amount of compensation is undisclosed, but they will be sharing $125 million of the settlement with their employees. The companies were still in talks at the end of 2019, but Southwest expects discounts from Boeing on any of their current - and future, aircraft orders.