At the US aircraft manufacturer Boeing, the management floor is being rearranged. Dennis Muilenburg will hand over the chairmanship of the board in the wake of the 737 Max new aircraft. Instead, he is to serve as CEO full time to the desired readmission of the 737 Max. His job brief also includes a closer look at customer needs and improved product and service safety at Boeing. This was announced by the group in Chicago.
The board of directors of the aircraft manufacturer will in future be headed by David L. Calhoun - as non-executive chairman. Calhoun said Muilenburg on behalf of the committee backing: "The Council has full faith in Dennis as CEO." Muilenburg stated in the company's announcement that it fully supported the decision of the Board of Directors. The entire team is focused on getting the 737 Max back into service safely. Investors responded to the news at first calmly, Boeing's shares turned after market close only slightly negative.
With the change of personnel at the highest level, the Group is reacting to the ongoing crisis. The step should serve above all to bring Muilenburg something out of the line of fire. The 55-year-old is heavily criticized by the 737-Max debacle after two crashes with hundreds dead and was already faced with resignation claims. In the future, a manager will be heading the board of directors with Calhoun, who has not been particularly noticed in the Boeing board of directors so far. As the supreme body, the Board of Directors is the parent of the Management Board.
Group in crisis
The 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, in which 346 people died in October and March, caused Boeing to slip into a deep crisis. The group is suspected, the hijackers in competition with the European arch rival Airbus rushed to the market and thereby neglected the security.
Boeing rejects this, but has admitted several errors and glitches. Significant legal trouble threatens - the company is already facing numerous lawsuits, for example, by relatives of crash victims, pilots and investors.
For Boeing, the case is particularly fierce, because a fault in the control software after initial investigations is considered a decisive cause of the crashes. The software was specially developed for the 737 Max. In a manufacturer error Boeing would face large liability risks. US authorities are also investigating whether everything was right when it came to approving the 737 Max. If Boeing had concealed security-related information from the US aviation authority, the case would become even more explosive.
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Also on business, the problems with the 737 Max for Boeing are an immense burden. Since the second crash in March, the crisis jets have been deported. When they are allowed to withdraw is still unclear. Since Boeing can no longer deliver its best-selling aircraft to the calamities, the production had to be significantly throttled. The longer the hoped-for readmission, the more expensive it gets. Boeing is under pressure to fix the software bugs that are the cause of the crash, but it's not getting on as hoped.
The problems lead to massive costs: In the second quarter alone, the 737-Max compulsory break in the Airbus rival for a record loss of $ 2.9 billion (about 2.6 billion euros). Turnover fell 35 percent to $ 15.8 billion. Boeing's total loss record since the flight bans imposed in March was $ 8.3 billion at the end of June, according to financial services Bloomberg.
