Boeing shamed as internal emails claim crash jet ‘designed by clowns’

Planes giant Boeing was humiliated on Friday after hundreds of internal emails showed staff fraught with concerns over possible design flaws on the 737 MAX, saying the doomed jet had been “designed by clowns”.

The aerospace giant, which employs 2,500 people in the UK, was forced to hand US investigators thousands of online chats and emails from 2017 and 2018. These highlighted widespread alarm among developers over glitches on the 737 MAX.

Attempts to swerve strict rules from US regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration and the financial benefits of launching the 737 Max without lengthy pilot training are also revealed.

The 737 Max was grounded 10 months ago by US air regulators after two crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people. Software glitches caused the nose of the plane to be pushed down, early reports suggest. Boeing initially attributed the crashes to pilot error. The disaster has prompted chaos at Boeing, leading to the exit of chief executive Dennis Muilenburg and to shares tumbling.

According to documents released to Congress today, Boeing employees repeatedly raised concerns internally about design issues, with one person involved saying software had “piss poor” design and was “doomed”.

“This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” the employee wrote in April 2017.

Another employee involved in the jet’s development wrote: “Part of me wants to see it fail so we can say WE TOLD YOU SO. That’s kind of sick of me, huh.”

The emails between pilots helping develop Boeing’s training simulator also flagged concerns over a 737 MAX training simulator. “Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t,” one pilot tester said.

The documents show one Boeing employee flew to Gatwick in May 2017 to help an unnamed airline test the 737 Max simulator and expressed concerns some features were not working properly.

US congressman Peter DeFazio, leading the investigation into Boeing, said the emails were “damning”. “They show a co-ordinated effort dating back to the earliest days of the 737 MAX programme to conceal critical information from regulators and the public,” he added.