Boeing fires 737 Max chief after fuselage panel blew out on Alaska Airlines plane and exposed a litany of safety failings that sparked $30BILLION market selloff

• Ed Clark, vice president of the MAX program and general manager at the Renton facility, is leaving the company, according to the Seattle Times
• It comes after a faulty door plug caused a panel to detach at 16,000 feet from a Boeing 737 series aircraft on an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5
• Boeing’s market cap dropped from $150bn on January 5 to a low of $120bn on January 16 

Boeing has reportedly fired the chief of its 737 Max program following the Alaska Airlines plane scandal which exposed a litany of safety failings.

Ed Clark, vice president of the MAX program and general manager at the Renton facility, is leaving the company, according to the Seattle Times.

He is set to be replaced by Katie Ringgold, the current vice president 737 delivery operations.

It comes after a faulty door plug caused a panel to detach at 16,000 feet from a Boeing 737 series aircraft on an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5. The plane was assembled at the Renton facility.

Boeing has reportedly fired the chief of its 737 Max program following the Alaska Airlines plane scandal which exposed a litany of safety failings

The Max 9’s were temporarily grounded by aviation regulators pending safety checks but are now once again in the skies.

Boeing’s market cap dropped from $150bn on the day of the Alaska Airlines scare to a low of $120bn on January 16.

Clark’s dismissal was announced in an email from Commercial Airplanes boss Stan Deal to employees on Wednesday morning, according to the Times.

Deal said the leadership restructuring aims to ensure an ‘enhanced focus on ensuring that every airplane we deliver meets or exceeds all quality and safety requirements’.

Panicked audio from the Alaska Airlines chaos showed how the pilot radioed for help after the window on the Boeing 737 Max plane blew out shortly after takeoff.

Accident investigators hailed it as a miracle that everyone on board survived after the ‘truly terrifying’ disintegration on the flight from Portland to Ontario International in California.

Toys, phones and clothes were sucked into the night after the plug door ‘departed the aircraft’ causing instant decompression with 171 passengers aboard Flight 1282.

But the fact that most people were still wearing their seat belts just 10 minutes into the flight probably stopped them following their possessions through the hole, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

‘We are very, very fortunate here that this didn’t end up in something more tragic,’ NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy told a press conference days later.

‘No one was seated in 26A and 26B, where that door plug is.’ ‘With that said, I imagine this was a pretty terrifying event. ‘We don’t often talk about psychological injury, but I’m sure that occurred here.’

The head rests for seats 26A and 25A were torn off as hurricane force winds buffeted the passengers and the seat at 26A was destroyed.

All 144 Boeing Max 9’s in service across across the US have been grounded pending emergency inspections by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

This is a breaking story with updates to follow.

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