Senators Grill Boeing CEO Over What He Knew of 737 MAX Safety Issues

Dennis Muilenburg (R), President and CEO of the Boeing Company, and John Hamilton (L), Vice President and Chief Engineer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, before a hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee in Washington on Oct. 29, 2019. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation questioned Boeing’s top executives on Oct. 29 regarding safety and oversight issues stemming from the two crashes of Boeing 737 MAX planes that killed 346 in 2018 and 2019.

The senators focused on recently revealed 2016 communications of 737 MAX’s then-chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, who raised issues about the behavior of the plane’s automated flight control system, MCAS, in a flight simulator. MCAS issues have been pinpointed as one of the major factors in the crashes.