A senior Boeing Co. BA 0.92% engineer who oversaw the design of the 737 MAX is retiring from the plane maker, the company said Friday.
Michael Teal, who was the chief project engineer during the jet’s development, is stepping down on April 1 after 35 years at the aerospace giant.
“He leaves a legacy of technical excellence and his influence on current and future products will be felt for years to come,” Howard McKenzie, chief engineer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a memo to employees reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A faulty flight-control system sent two 737 MAX jets into fatal nose dives in late 2018 and early 2019. The accidents took 346 lives and led to a world-wide grounding of the aircraft that took nearly two years.
The jet is an updated version of the plane maker’s best selling single-aisle plane, and was delivered to its first customer in May 2017. The MAX crisis has cost Boeing around $20 billion in lost production, compensation and related charges and provisions.
Mr. Teal went on to become the chief engineer for Boeing’s newest jetliner, the 777X. The large wide-body jet has faced increased regulatory scrutiny in the wake of the MAX crashes. It is now more than three years late, with Boeing expecting the first to be delivered to customers in late 2023.
After the 737 MAX crashes, Mr. Teal provided closed-door testimony as part of a U.S. House probe examining how Boeing developed the airplane and air-safety regulators certified its design.
Keith Leverkuhn, who served as the MAX program manager from 2013 to 2018 and also testified, retired in 2020 in what a Boeing spokesman said at the time was a long-planned move.
Mr. Teal told congressional investigators he relied on experts in various engineering disciplines to determine the design and safety of the flight-control system, known as MCAS, later blamed for the crashes.
He told congressional investigators Boeing’s design of the 737 MAX followed longstanding industry assumptions and complied with established company practices.
“The team followed the process that we use to design, you know, flight control systems and went through the process of working with the pilots as well as the stability and control” engineers, Mr. Teal said.
Boeing said Mr. Teal will be succeeded as 777X chief project engineer by David Loffing, who currently holds the same role on the legacy 777 program.
Write to Andrew Tangel at [email protected]
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