NEW YORK — Boeing ousted CEO Dennis Muilenburg on Monday with no end in sight to the crisis that has engulfed the vaunted American aircraft manufacturer since the crash of two of its 737 Max airliners.
The Boeing board had supported Muilenburg for months despite calls for his resignation from lawmakers and relatives of the passengers killed. When it became clear in recent days that federal regulators would not certify the grounded Max to fly again by year’s end as Muilenburg had hoped, the board finally abandoned him.
Board members decided to remove him on a conference call Sunday, according to a person familiar with the events who discussed the private deliberations on condition of anonymity.
The move came after another bad week for Boeing. The aerospace giant had announced it would temporarily halt production of the Max because it wasn’t clear when it could deliver the planes. And Boeing’s new Starliner space capsule went off course during a bungled, unmanned test flight to the International Space Station. The company said Muilenburg departed immediately and its current chairman, David Calhoun, will take over as CEO on Jan. 13.
Boeing said it decided it needed new leadership to regain the confidence of regulators. The company — which has been criticized over the design of the Max, Boeing’s failure to tell pilots about a new flight-control system on the plane, and its handling of the crisis after the first crash — promised a “renewed commitment to full transparency.”