Boeing is on a mission to regain customer trust after the Alaska Airlines blowup.
Its new chairman, Steve Mollenkopf, has decided to contact executives at a number of major airlines directly to try to ease their tense relations, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Boeing’s reputation was hit hard after the January explosion, when a 737 Max 9 was left with a gaping hole in its fuselage after losing a door plug in mid-flight, and the aircraft maker is making the subject to increased surveillance by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The FAA is now blocking Boeing from increasing production of the 737 Max to hold the company “accountable for its production quality issues.”
And even though 737 Max production is capped at 38 such planes per month, Boeing actually makes fewer than that, Boeing Chief Financial Officer Brian West said in March, according to Reuters.
The slowdown in deliveries has angered major airlines, some of which have had to change their plans for the peak summer season.
Southwest, for example, has suspended hiring because it expects to receive 46 new 737 Max planes this year, up from 79, Reuters reported.
Shortly before CEO Dave Calhoun announced his departure at the end of the year, the Wall Street Journal reported that airline CEOs had requested a meeting with Boeing’s board of directors to air their frustrations.
But Mollenkopf, the former CEO of Qualcomm, decided to cancel formal meetings with the CEOs of some of his biggest customers – Alaska Airlines, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines – and contact them directly.
People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the four airline bosses wanted to air their grievances about Boeing’s ongoing problems without Calhoun present.
Boeing declined to comment for this story.
This comes as Alaska Airlines said in a filing Thursday that Boeing paid it $160 million in compensation to compensate for lost profits resulting from the blowout incident and the subsequent grounding of its fleet. 737 Max 9 aircraft.
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