Boeing’s response to the 737 Max crisis confused and frightened people, making it hard to believe its apologies, experts say

Stephen Brashear/GettyImages; Yutong Yuan/Business Insider

Boeing’s response to the two fatal crashes of its 737 Max planes was marked by delayed apologies and confusing messages, according to experts, analysts, and lawyers who talked to Business Insider.
This likely deepened mistrust in Boeing rather than winning it back as the company is aiming to do, they said.
Boeing seemed to defend the plane’s safety at the same time as apologizing for the crashes and promising to update the plane.
One expert said that strategy was a "confusing, ambiguous thing that caused people to feel a little bit of anxiety."
"The first rule in any crisis is to show that you care. And what is clear to me is that Boeing was unable to get people to believe that they cared," they said.
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Boeing’s attempts to manage the crisis caused by two fatal crashes of its 737 Max planes left people confused, anxious and sceptical of its apologies instead of restoring trust in the company, numerous experts told Business Insider.

The world’s biggest aircraft manufacturer was left scrambling for explanations and an appropriate international response after two Max jets crashed within five months, killing almost 350 people.

First, a Lion Air 737 Max crashed into the sea off Indonesia in October 2018, killing all 189 people on board. Then, in March 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after take off, killing everyone on board, a total of 157 people.

Boeing CEO Denis Muilenburg apologized in a video 26 days after the second crash, acknowledging that the second preliminary report confirmed that the plane’s sensors had misfired in the same way on both doomed jets.

"We own it," he said, vowing that a software update meant similar accidents would "never happen again."

But in the coming weeks, the company would also defend the design of the plane.

Boeing did not respond to requests for comment.

But experts from both the aviation and communications industries, and analysts, told Business Insider that the company’s response was slow, insufficient, and confusing, and likely contributed to a deepening mistrust around Boeing’s planes, instead of helping it win trust back. Lawyers helping to sue Boeing — who obviously don’t have the company’s interest at heart — agree.

Helio Fred Garcia, a crisis management professor at New York University and Columbia University, and president of crisis management firm Logos Consulting Group, told Business Insider: "Trust didn’t fall because two of its plane crashes. Trust fell because they were seen to be indifferent."

Boeing’s immediate response to the second crash put it on the back foot

That Muilenburg apologized for the company’s role in the crashes was a good step for the company, Garcia said. "They said, ‘We’re on it, we apologize, we take it seriously, we’re on the scene.’ They got that right."

But the apology video, he said, came too late, and the pre-recorded video format distributed through social media and news networks may not have helped.

Twitter/Dennis A. Muilenburg

"My sense of Muilenburg is that he was a few steps behind where he needed to be."

"It was a good video. But it was a) late b) limited mostly to social media and any mainstream media who quoted from it."

"A video statement is better than no statement. But it would be more effective if it was in front of humans, with some ability to take questions."

This slow response, he said, may have led some airlines to mistrust Boeing. Soon after the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March, Indonesian’s flagship airline Garuda, cancelled a $5 billion order for forty-nine 737 Max jets, saying passengers "lost trust and no longer have the confidence" in the plane.

Professor Irv Schenkler, who teaches crisis communication at NYU’s Stern School of Business, told Business Insider that Boeing took an "operational problem" and made it "a reputational crisis — driven by poor messaging at the start of the events, creating concern and fear."

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Boeing’s initial strategy was "the less said, the better," he said.

But this appeared to backfire: "This strategy created a vacuum which media sources stepped into, finding out details about meetings and messages that contradicted company statements."

Its strategy then changed with the apology, Schenkler said, "out of necessity."

But Muilenburg’s apology, Schenkler said, shows Boeing is "hoping to ‘hold the line’ with industrial customers and governments while also trying to put their best face forward via executive apologies using video."

"To some extent, it’s a matter of putting lipstick on a pig — it’s still a pig."

Boeing’s apologies led to a conflicting set of messages that may have made people more frightened

Antara Foto/Hadi Sutrisno via REUTERS

Boeing’s apology came after it pledged to create a software update that would fix the plane’s problems and, once approved by the FAA and global regulators, return it to the skies as "one of the safest planes ever to fly."

But Boeing also defended the plane’s design to the public and to shareholders, claiming that there was not a "technical slip or gap" in its creation.

Chris Clearfield, founder of risk management consulting firm System Logic, a licensed pilot, and co-author of Meltdown, a book about handling catastrophes, told Business Insider that these messages appear contradictory in a way that meant Boeing’s "crisis response was challenged."

Jim Corridore, an aerospace and defense analyst at CFRA, told Business Insider that "Boeing is playing a double-edged game" by admitting responsibility while also suggesting things beyond its control may have gone wrong.

In April, Muilenburg suggested that pilots in the Ethiopian Airlines crash did not "completely" follow the manufacturer’s emergency procedures

Corridore said this approach is "not a great strategy."

Jim Young-Pool/Getty Images

Boeing, Garcia said, seemed "unprepared" for the concern from airlines and governments around the world, which grounded the plane, and it sent out a confusing mix of messages that "led to a failure to execute their strategy well."

"They said all the right things about ‘our condolences’ and ‘we are committed to getting it right.’ But they said ‘our plane is safe, we are confident in the safety of our plane,’ and they also said we’re working on a software update."

Garcia said this was confusing because "if they’re working on a software upgrade it suggests there’s something wrong with the software."

"When they say ‘We apologize, but our plane is safe,’ people say: ‘Well hold on a minute, those two statements can’t be true.’"

REUTERS/Baz Ratner/File Photo

This confusion, he said, caused people to be anxious about Boeing: "They sent out this confusing, ambiguous thing that caused people to feel a little bit of anxiety. When there is ambiguity, there is unresolved tension. And that unresolved tension causes anxiety."

Both Clearfield and Garcia said Boeing was likely thinking about the plane’s safety in terms of its engineering, rather than from the view of pilots that fly the planes. Pilots can make human errors and, reportedly did not always know that a safety feature in the planes they were flying was turned off.

"What I believe they meant by that was ‘our airplane is safe when pilots know how to fly this plane.’ And they assumed that all of the pilots knew how to fly this plane," Garcia said.

REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

"I have the sense that they weren’t intentionally misleading, they simply were thinking like engineers and not like pilots."

Lawyers for victims’ families also criticize Boeing’s response

Brian Kabateck, who represents 13 families suing Boeing over the Lion Air crash, told Business Insider that Boeing could help families by resolving the cases and letting them move on. But first, he said, they needed to be consistent in their messaging.

"The first thing that Boeing could do is take a consistent position," he said.

Joe Power, a Chicago-based personal-injury lawyer representing some Ethiopian Airlines crash victims, told Business Insider that Boeing asking for peoples’ trust is "not only confusing but disingenuous."

He said Boeing was speaking more publicly because of attention on the case: "Because of the public outcry Boeing is slowly rolling out the truth. This slow truth appears to be coming from whistleblowers rather than the Boeing hierarchy."

REUTERS/Tiksa NegerI/File Photo

"Boeing’s belated and inadequate response has fallen on deaf ears for all those who have suffered from this tragedy."

Some lawyers say Muilenburg’s apology could help families’ cases, and more families have come forward to sue Boeing since his address.

Garcia said lawyers will often tell their clients not to apologize "fearing it will increase liability," but said it was a better strategy for Boeing. "My reply is they’ll be sued anyway. Better to maintain trust."

How Boeing handles the crisis going forward is important for the company

Garcia said that Boeing needed to concentrate on working with airlines, so it can "ensure that every pilot knows what’s on his or her airplane and what’s not, that every pilot knows how to manage the new software."

He said any effort to rebrand the Max, as suggested by US President Donald Trump, would be seen as "essentially a PR stunt — trying to deceive people in the future about what kind of plane they’re getting on."

Boeing’s handling of the crisis will also be important for its financial future, having already seen profits plunge in the aftermath of the disasters.

Corridore, the aviation analyst, said that his company has given Boeing’s stock a "buy" rating, because "we do think that Boeing will get this software issue fixed, the planes are ultimately going to be safe."

But he said they needed to think about how to manage the crisis "as they plot a business strategy for how it’s going to regain customer confidence for the next 50 years."

"As long as they do get this thing right, which we think they will, then the stock will be OK."

FAA house transportation committee daniel elwell Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

One means of helping Boeing’s image, Garcia said, would be for Muilenburg to appear before a congressional committee.

"The challenge for Boeing is this is now an issue of trust and it’s an issue of accountability, and only the CEO can restore that trust or retain that trust or otherwise speak in a way that is likely to do either of those things in front of Congress."

Ultimately, Garcia said: "The first rule in any crisis is to show that you care. And what is clear to me is that Boeing was unable to get people to believe that they cared."

"Boeing can survive this, but only if they show they care."

Do you work at Boeing or the FAA, or are you a pilot? Got a tip or a story to share? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +353 86 335 0386 using a non-work phone, or email her at sbaker@businessinsider.com, or Twitter DM her at @sineadbaker1.

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