Comment by tidepod12
5 years ago
The max was developed and launched by Dennis Muilenberg. Muilenberg was President and then CEO of Boeing for 7 of the 8 years that the MAX was under development and launch. McNerney was only there for 4 of those years.
You can argue all you want about who shoulders more responsibility, but Muilenberg was an executive throughout the entire program, and more importantly, was the CEO who oversaw the decision for the certification of the MAX prior to first flight, which was the critically faulty decision.
Miulenberg became CEO in July 2015. The 737 MAX went into production in 2014 and had its first flight in January 2016.
Muilenberg became president in 2013, and the 737 MAX certifications happened in 2017, when Muilenberg was CEO.
For large aerospace projects, the critical decisions are made years before first flight, and most often even years before experimental production start. Judging from the timeline Mullenberg clearly inherited the messy decisions from his predecessor.
Though of course he would have had the knowledge to understand something didn’t smell quite right after. Whether he had the sole authority to order a delay or redesign in the intervening time is questionable. It may have been that he couldn’t wrangle enough support from the board to do something dramatic.