A Boeing Co senior pilot said he might have unintentionally misled regulators, in a series of internal messages from 2016 that became public Friday, plunging the world’s largest airplane maker into a fresh crisis.
The messages, first reported by Reuters, sent Boeing shares tumbling, prompted a demand by US regulators for an immediate explanation, and a new call in Congress for Boeing to shake up its management as it continues to grapple with the fallout from two fatal crashes that have grounded its fastest-selling plane.
In a transcript of instant messages between two employees, the 737 MAX’s then-chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, said the so-called MCAS anti-stall system in the airplane was “running rampant” in a flight simulator session. The system has been tied to the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that together killed 346 people.
