By David Shepardson and Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing (NYSE:BA) CEO Dave Calhoun said on Wednesday the planemaker will only support the operation of its airplanes if it is "100%" confident in their safety.
"We don't put planes in the air that we don't have 100% confidence in," Calhoun told reporters in Washington before one of a series of meetings with U.S. senators on the grounding of the company's 737 Max 9 jets in the U.S. Calhoun added that Boeing fully understands "the gravity of the situation."
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded most of those jets for checks after a plug replacing an unused exit door tore off an Alaska Airlines plane on Jan. 5, forcing an emergency landing.
Calhoun said senators had a lot of questions and vowed to be as transparent as possible in discussing the Alaska Airlines incident.
He referred a question about a Seattle Times report that Boeing had removed a component called a door plug that blew out on that Alaska Airlines MAX 9 to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which did not comment.
"We believe in our airplanes," Calhoun said. "We have confidence in the safety of our airplanes."
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told Reuters this month that the agency was "going through a process to work out how to restore confidence in the integrity of these plug doors."
Boeing said on Tuesday it will hold a "quality stand down" on Thursday at the Seattle-area location where it makes the 737 MAX jets, pausing production and delivery operations for a day.
Calhoun will also meet with U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee. She said last week that she planned to hold a hearing after the FAA grounded 171 MAX 9 airplanes. A spokesperson for Cantwell said she was meeting with Calhoun at Boeing's request.
Cantwell and Senator Ted Cruz, the committee's top Republican, held a closed-door briefing last week on the grounding with FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker and NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. Cruz will meet with Calhoun on Thursday.
On Tuesday, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby (NYSE:KEX) said the airline, which has ordered 277 MAX 10 jets with options for another 200, would build a new fleet plan that does not include a model already mired in regulatory and delivery delays.
Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told NBC News the airline found "some loose bolts on many" Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets during inspections. The FAA is still reviewing data from an initial group of 40 planes.
The FAA's Whitaker told CNBC on Tuesday that "it's been difficult to predict, so we've sort of stopped trying ... But as soon as we get it sorted out it'll be up again."
Late on Sunday, the FAA urged operators of 737-900ER planes with the same door plug to immediately inspect them after some airlines had noted "findings with bolts" during maintenance inspections.