Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Fired Over 737 MAX Disasters, Keeps $62 Million Despite 346 Deaths

Boeing’s Board of Directors fired CEO Dennis Muilenburg on December 23, 2019, over his handling of the 737 MAX crisis that killed 346 people in two crashes. Despite presiding over the deadliest corporate safety scandal in aviation history, Muilenburg departed with approximately $62 million in compensation and pension benefits, rising to $80 million when including stock options and other assets.

Boeing announced Muilenburg would receive no severance pay and no 2019 annual bonus, framing this as accountability. However, he retained $39 million in long-term stock awards, a $15 million pension from 33 years at Boeing, and $18.5 million in unexercised stock options. He forfeited only $9 million in unvested 2019 stock awards and $14.6 million in other unvested compensation, amounts that barely registered against his massive accumulated wealth from years of prioritizing production speed and cost-cutting over safety.

The “accountability” was theatrical. Muilenburg faced no criminal charges, no clawback of prior bonuses earned while concealing MCAS from regulators, and no personal financial consequences proportionate to 346 deaths. His termination came only after Boeing’s relationship with the FAA and Congress became untenable, not from genuine board concern about the crashes. The board replaced Muilenburg with David Calhoun, another company insider, ensuring continuity of Boeing’s culture of production over safety.

Victims’ families denounced the compensation package as obscene. While their loved ones died in preventable crashes caused by Boeing’s fraud and corner-cutting, the executive who oversaw the conspiracy walked away with generational wealth. The firing demonstrated that in American corporate capitalism, even catastrophic safety failures that kill hundreds result in golden parachutes for executives, not prosecution or genuine financial penalty.