Boeing CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, admitted a mistake in implementing safety alert system on 737 Max aircraft in an interview with CBS News.
After the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March, the aircraft have been grounded across the world and it is still unknown when they will be permitted to fly again.
Dennis Muilenburg said a mistake had been made in the software for a cockpit warning light called an “angle-of-attack (AOA) disagree alert”.
He said: “We clearly fell short and the implementation of this angle-of-attack disagree alert was a mistake, right, we did not implement it properly.”
In an interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News he said Boeing was now fixing the problem.
The alert could have notified pilots and maintenance crews that there was a problem early in the flight.
Flight experts say that this alert could have saved the lives on board both Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines disasters. Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 302 crashed after an erroneous reading from one of the AOA sensors triggered a flight control system (MCAS) which repeatedly pushed the nose of the aircraft down.
Mr Muilenburg also admitted in the CBS interview that the company knew that the alert system was not active on all 737 Max jets in 2017 and yet did not tell the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for 13 months.
He said: “Our communication on that was not what it should have been.”
And he issued another apology, saying “it feels personal”.
He said that the crashes have had “the biggest impact on me” of anything in his 34 years at the planemaker.
IATA has said the 737 Max aircraft are not expected to return to service until mid-August.
Full video of Mr Muilenburg interview on CBS News can be seen here:
