OREANDA-NEWS Emirates Airline president Tim Clark said he had witnessed a "progressive decline" in Boeing standards. He attributed this to long-standing management mistakes, including prioritizing financial performance over engineering excellence.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Mr Clark said Boeing had a "last chance" to fix the bugs. For the first time, Emirates will send its engineers to oversee the production lines of the Boeing 777 aircraft, as well as its supplier Spirit AeroSystems. "The fact that we have to do this is evidence of what happened. In the old days, this would not have been sanctioned," Tim Clark stressed.

In his opinion, the previous management of Boeing repeatedly made mistakes, among which he called the outsourcing of parts of production and the transfer of part of the 787 production to South Carolina to reduce costs. As a result of this move, Boeing has lost "skills and competence," Mr. Clark is convinced.

"Will Boeing be able to regain its former glory? I think it will be so. Will Boeing continue to produce and design excellent aircraft, well-designed and reliable for customers? I am sure they will do it. But now they need to clean up the house. And this is a serious change in priorities," Tim Clark is convinced.

As the FT clarifies, Emirates is one of Boeing's largest customers. In November 2023, the company placed an order for 95 wide-body Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft for $52 billion.

On January 6, a Boeing 737 MAX 9, en route from Portland to Ontario, made an emergency landing at the departure airport due to the fact that the airliner's emergency exit hatch plug fell off. This led to the depressurization of the cabin at an altitude of about 5 km. After the emergency, the US authorities tightened the requirements for the operation of the Boeing 737 MAX 9. At the same time, the authorities also approved the program for the return of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 to operation.