Boeing continues to reorganize its safety infrastructure, announcing on Wednesday that it has appointed Michael Delaney to the newly created role of chief aerospace safety officer. In his new position, Delaney will lead development of the company’s Global Aviation Safety program. He previously served as Boeing’s vice president of Commercial Airplanes Digital Transformation and led the Confident Travel Initiative.
“There is nothing more important to Boeing than the safety of our employees, products and services, and over the past year we’ve taken a series of actions to improve our safety practices and enhance our safety culture, including the establishment of our enterprise Safety Management System (SMS),” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in a message to employees. “Building on these efforts, today we will continue to strengthen our safety infrastructure by naming Mike Delaney as Boeing’s chief aerospace safety officer.”
Boeing’s Global Aviation Safety program includes the company’s Product and Services Safety (P&SS) organization, which was formed in 2019 as part of Boeing’s response to the fatal accidents of two 737 MAX aircraft, Aerospace Safety Analytics and Global Aviation Safety System. The Confident Travel Initiative, a program created last May to address air travel health risks during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, also falls under the Global Aviation Safety umbrella. Delaney will step into his new role immediately.
Ah! Mike Delaney. When I was at Boeing, he was the VP of Engineering. Quote from him (maybe paraphrase, it was about 10 years ago): “When an engineer tells me ‘it’s the right thing to do’, that raises a red flag. It means they just want to throw money at the problem.” Perfect person to be in charge of safety!