Boeing Vice President Michael Teal, the former chief project engineer on the 737 Max program during that jet's development, is retiring, Boeing announced internally Friday.
Though Teal was the top engineer on the Max program during the jet's certification process, in congressional testimony in 2020 he denied all knowledge of the engineering flaws that led to the tragedy of two crashes that killed 346 people.
He was never held responsible for those mistakes. Instead he was appointed chief project engineer on Boeing's next new airplane, the 777X, which is in development.
In the internal announcement of his departure as of April 1, Howard McKenzie, vice president and chief engineer at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, praised Teal effusively for his 35 years at Boeing, and wrote that he "leaves a legacy of technical excellence and his influence on current and future products will be felt for years to come."
Questioned by House committee investigators in 2020, Teal testified that he was not aware that the errant flight control software that brought down the two Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — was triggered by a single sensor.
He learned that only after the first crash, Lion Air flight JT610, he said, "Most likely through the press."
He told the investigators that he had "no knowledge that MCAS had a repeat function in it," another flawed element of the design that caused the system to reactivate repeatedly as the pilots struggled to counter it.
"The technical leaders well below my level would have gone into that level of detail," Teal said.
Likewise, only "when it showed up in the press" later, did Teal learn that a warning light that was supposed to tell pilots if two angle of attack sensors disagreed wasn't working on most Maxes, including the two that crashed — even though Boeing engineers had discovered this glitch in August 2017, more than a year before the first accident.
And although Teal admitted that he had "signed off on the configuration of the airplane to include the MCAS function," he said he couldn't recall any discussion of the decision to remove all mention of MCAS from the pilot flight manuals.
Before he headed engineering on the Max, Teal was chief project engineer on the 747-8 freighter model.
A person familiar with Teal's standing at Boeing said it is possible the company may engage Teal as a post-retirement consultant in his areas of expertise. Boeing declined to comment on that possibility.
Teal will be replaced effective immediately as 777X chief project engineer by David Loffing, who has been chief project engineer on the current 777 model.
Loffing's role on the current 777 model will be taken by Ben Linder, 777/777X director of engineering.
Teal's departure means that all the senior executives with major roles overseeing the Max program during its development are gone.
Kevin McAllister, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, was fired in October 2019. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was fired two months later.
Keith Leverkuhn, who was the vice president in overall charge of the Max development program, retired in July 2020.
In the 2020 congressional interviews, Leverkuhn, like Teal, told the U.S. House investigators that he knew nothing of the key details about MCAS and said there was minimal focus on that flight control system at his level.
Leverkuhn denied that key engineering design and pilot training decisions were driven by cost considerations and said he considered the Max's development a success.
