Boeing next month will temporarily stop making the 737 Max, its most popular passenger jet, the company said on Monday.The decision, after a two-day board meeting, is the culmination of the worst crisis in the company’s 103-year history and follows two crashes that killed 346 people.
Boeing did not say how long it expects production to be halted.
The company said the continued uncertainty of the 737 Max's future forced it to make the drastic move to pause the plane's production and shift its focus to delivering planes it has already produced. Boeing has an inventory of about 400 of the airplanes in storage.
One focus for investigators is a software system known as MCAS, which was created for the Max and was found to have played a role in both crashes. Shortly after the first crash, off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, Boeing promised a fix to MCAS. Then the second crash happened in March, in Ethiopia.
After the two crashes, prosecutors, regulators and two congressional committees are investigating whether Boeing overlooked safety risks and played down the need for pilot training in its effort to design, produce and certify the plane as quickly as possible.
"We believe this decision is least disruptive to maintaining long-term production system and supply chain health," Boeing said in a release Monday.
Boeing has been building 42 of the 737 Max jets a month since the grounding, so as not to cause hardship for its suppliers or be forced to lay off workers it will need later. But the company has not been able to deliver the planes.