There’s something about this story that doesn’t compute with me. Follow me for a brief moment.
Boeing Corp. has fired its chief executive officer, David Muilenberg, over the crisis that has grounded the once-highly touted 737 MAX jetliner, which was involved in two crashes that killed nearly 350 passengers and crew members. Boeing didn’t like the way Muilenberg handled the matter.
The company wants to restore confidence in the management, not to mention in the aircraft, the production of which Boeing has suspended.
So, who is brought in to replace Muilenberg? His boss, the chairman of the Boeing board of directors, David Calhoun, who takes over as CEO effective immediately.
I don’t know about you, but I always have presumed that a company in search of a way to rebuild shattered confidence and restoring its reputation would look outside its management structure for a fresh outlook, a new way of doing things, someone who can kick some a**.
The 737 MAX isn’t flying any time soon. The company isn’t building any new aircraft until it can fix the engineering the issues that reportedly caused the fatal crashes. The impact of this grounding has been significant right here, at Dallas Love Field, home base of Southwest Airlines, which operates a huge fleet of 737s.
Firing the CEO and then replacing him with the guy to whom he reported, it seems to me, doesn’t instill much confidence in me that the company has found the right formula to fix what has gone so terribly wrong.