When the board of Boeing Co. held its first formal meeting about seven weeks after the initial crash of the 737 MAX in late 2018, the directors did not discuss the jet’s safety in depth, according to newly released details of the company’s internal documents. company.
Months later, Boeing’s current chief executive told reporters that the company’s directors acted quickly to resolve the accident, according to excerpts from the company’s documents contained in a shareholder lawsuit.
This and other new information in the process cast doubt on whether Boeing directors pressured management over safety issues or seriously considered grounding the plane before a second 737 MAX crash in early 2019.
Parts of Boeing’s internal documents, which indicate dates and details of the meetings held by the directors and what was discussed, are cited in the shareholder action that alleges that the directors violated their fiduciary duties in overseeing management. The suit also alleges that David Calhoun, the then chief executive who later became CEO, exaggerated to journalists the degree to which directors took care of safety issues between and after the two accidents.
The lawsuit claims that Calhoun, who became CEO in early 2020, conducted a public relations campaign that “insisted that the board acted more urgently and was more engaged than it really was” after the two accidents that killed 346 people in October 2018 and March 2019. The suit cites Boeing internal emails and other documents that were not previously public.