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This is excessively kind to Muilenberg. Arguably the biggest screw-up was promising the airlines too much with regards to delivery date and training requiremen

This is excessively kind to Muilenberg. Arguably the biggest screw-up was promising the airlines too much with regards to delivery date and training requirements. That created too much of an incentive to ship an unsafe product. The truly fatal decision though was made in 2016 when Muilenberg was CEO. That decision was to make MCAS a single sensor system vs. a two sensor system. Originally, MCAS would activate based on a combination of a G sensor and the AoA sensor. Sometime in the middle of 2016, when they did flight testing, they found that the undesirable handling characteristics could manifest without high G, so they took the G sensor out of the mix. In order to account for the low-speed, low-g handling problem, they also had to make the MCAS corrections be much more powerful, which made it much more dangerous. The FAA apparently wasn't informed of this. This key moment was approximately one year into Muilenberg's tenure, and so the buck has to stop with him. Muilenberg was also CEO after the Lion Air crash, and he's responsible for the decision not to ground the fleet at that time. He's also responsible for not wanting to ground the fleet after the second crash, and pressuring the FAA to quickly certify a fix.

el_nino 7y ago
"promising the airlines too much with regards to delivery date and training requirements. That created too much of an incentive to ship an unsafe product." I think this is the real failure of a CEO. They can't be constantly on the watch for engineering mistakes but they are the ones who set the tone for the company culture. Setting unachievable deadlines, pressure to deliver to the point where it can only be done by cutting corners, choosing strategies that are unsustainable long run in the chase for short term profits. These are the real failures and if they lead to loss of life they should be treated accordingly. We keep waiting for the market to punish them but the market punishes companies not people. We don't need to just apply punishments, we need deterrents. We need a bonus-malus system where they don't just jump off with a golden parachute. If there is indeed no legal recourse to prevent such matters (ridiculous as it may sound), they should at least be subjected to penalties as a standard practice.

el_nino 7y ago

"promising the airlines too much with regards to delivery date and training requirements. That created too much of an incentive to ship an unsafe product." I think this is the real failure of a CEO. They can't be constantly on the watch for engineering mistakes but they are the ones who set the tone for the company culture. Setting unachievable deadlines, pressure to deliver to the point where it can only be done by cutting corners, choosing strategies that are unsustainable long run in the chase for short term profits. These are the real failures and if they lead to loss of life they should be treated accordingly. We keep waiting for the market to punish them but the market punishes companies not people. We don't need to just apply punishments, we need deterrents. We need a bonus-malus system where they don't just jump off with a golden parachute. If there is indeed no legal recourse to prevent such matters (ridiculous as it may sound), they should at least be subjected to penalties as a standard practice.