AIRLINE INDUSTRY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When Donald Trump spoke with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg on Tuesday [3-12-19] to get assurances about the safety of the 737 MAX plane that crashed in Ethiopia, he wasn’t talking to a stranger. The U.S. president, who owned his own airline, Trump Shuttle, from 1989 to 1992, is an aviation enthusiast. Before becoming president he had his own private jet and since his inauguration, he has taken visible delight in the presidential aircraft, Air Force One. His aviation connections have expanded during his presidency to include relationships with powerful executives in the defense industry, including Muilenburg, with whom he has talked several times. Muilenburg told Trump in Tuesday’s morning call that the aircraft was safe and did not need to be grounded, two people briefed on the conversation said. Later in the day, aviation officials repeated that U.S. flights of the plane would continue. That leaves the United States as an outlier in its response to Sunday’s [3-10-19] crash of a Boeing 737 MAX that killed 157 people. The European Union’s aviation safety regulator on Tuesday suspended all flights by the plane in the bloc; of the top 10 countries by air passenger travel, all but the United States and Japan have halted flights.”
–Reuters, “Ties Between Boeing and Trump Run Deep,” The New York Times online, March 12, 2019