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Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, said the Boeing 737 Max 8 scandal was "unthinkable" for the aviation industry – but it still stands alongside Boeing.
Delta's fleet has never included the Boeing 737 Max 8s involved in two deadly crashes, but the Atlanta-based company has many more Boeing. Bastian is ready to vouch for their safety.
"Sixty percent of our planes we serve are Boeing," Bastian told Recode, Kara Swisher and Jason Del Rey on Tuesday at the 2019 code conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. "Boeing has been the most successful aerospace company in the world."
On 10 March, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Nairobi, Kenya faltered and crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 157 passengers. The incident occurred just a few months after the launch of a flight of the same model, Lion Air, from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing 189 people. After the Boeing 737 Max's anti-stall system made pilot testing difficult for pilots, the models were grounded around the world as regulators were investigating what had happened.
Bastian said Delta had planned to buy the Boeing 737 Max aircraft for about a year, but had finally decided not to do so. He added that the aircraft's anti-stall system had not been put in place when the company was planning to transport the 737 Max, but if Delta intended to buy it, the company "would have had some questions but we never even went there.
He stated that he had the "greatest confidence" in the fact that, no matter what the problem, it will be solved. His position makes sense, since, as he said, most of Delta's planes are Boeing, and if consumers worry about Boeing jets, it could hurt Delta's bottom line. . (In the United States, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines flew Boeing 737 Max 8.)
More generally, the Boeing scandal has had negative consequences for the entire aviation sector and has led to a huge international scandal.
Vox's Matt Yglesias explained what was happening, and that's much more than this anti-stall system. Boeing, seeking to outperform a competitor, made less than optimal decisions about the aircraft and used software to circumvent many other model issues. Bastian relies on Boeing to act properly, but he acknowledged Tuesday that the situation was still difficult.
"Honestly, it's a bit unthinkable what happened and I think … we've been traumatized as an industry," Bastian said. "We are always thinking about what happened."
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