The head of Boeing’s 737 Max program, Ed Clark, is no longer with the company as the air travel giant deals with fallout from the blow-off door on an Alaska Air flight January 5. Boeing, desperately trying to get a handle on its reputation as it struggles with quality control, received international backlash after the Boeing 737 Max 9 door plug tore off the aircraft mid-flight at 16,000 feet in the air after taking off from Portland, OR, last month, with an investigators reporting the door episode was due to four missing bolts. The Boeing 737 Max 9s are already back in service, having reportedly undergone an inspection by the Federal Aviation Administration.Clark worked for Boeing for 15 years and led the department dedicated to the 737 Max models since 2021, according to the New York Times. The 737 Max department was taking off at the time of his promotion, despite two devastating crashes of Max 8 aircraft in Indonesia in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The incident raised international scrutiny surrounding the Max 737 models. Chief executive of the commercial airplanes unit Stan Deal said Wednesday Clark will be immediately leaving his post, according to a memo obtained by the New York Post. Boeing is apparently undergoing a leadership shuffle, as Deal also said in the memo Senior Vice-president of Airplane programs Elizabeth Lund would be moved “to the new position of senior vice president for BCA (Boeing Commercial Airplanes) Quality, where she will lead quality control and quality assurance efforts.”Former senior design engineer Mike Fleming has assumed Lund’s former role. The purpose of the leadership overhaul was to continue the company’s “enhanced focus on ensuring that every airplane we deliver meets or exceeds all quality and safety requirements.”“Our customers demand, and deserve, nothing less,” said Deal in the memo.All leadership decisions are effective immediately. Chair of the National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy told CNN earlier in February she is fully confident in the model and "would have no problem tomorrow taking a flight on a Max 9.""Of course, something like this can happen again,” she said in the next breath. “There is no way that this plane should have been delivered with four safety critical bolts missing,” Homendy added, noting “a problem in the process.”The 737 Max aircraft supplier Spirit AeroSystems told Boeing earlier in February there were manufacturing issues, including incorrectly drilled holes, in approximately 50 undelivered planes, per the New York Post.
