The accidents have put Boeing on the defensive. The 737 Max is Boeing’s best-selling jet ever and expected to be a major driver of profit with around 5,000 of the planes on order. Its shares have fallen about 13 percent this week.
Following the Indonesia crash, Boeing was expected to updated its software and training guidelines so that airlines can teach their pilots to fly the planes more safely and easily. That software update is planned for April.
“Boeing is an incredible company,” Mr. Trump said. “They are working very, very hard right now and hopefully they’ll very quickly come up with the answer, but until they do, the planes are grounded.”
On Tuesday morning, Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, had called Mr. Trump to personally express his confidence in the safety of the jets, according to two people briefed on the conversation.
The brief call had already been in the works, but it happened to come shortly after Mr. Trump raised concerns that airplanes were becoming too complex to fly and therefore endangering passengers. “Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” he wrote on Twitter.
Boeing said it supported the decision to ground the planes.
“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution,” Mr. Muilenburg said. “We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/business/canada-737-max.html
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