A senior executive for United Airlines said that inexperience in the aviation industry caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to Boeing’s recent problems.

"Experience counts, and they need to have a good, experienced team righting the ship," said United Airlines’ EVP of Finance, Gerry Laderman, during the Airline Economics conference in Dublin from January 28 to January 31. "Part of the problem for lots of industrial companies is nobody realized the difficulties that we were all going to get hit with as we came out of COVID.”

"Principally the supply chain but also a lack of senior people and a lot of retirements: the knowledge base,” he continued. “That impacts everybody, and I think that is part of what happened at Boeing and... it will take time."

According to Reuters, Laderman said that he would not comment on whether or not management changes should be made at Boeing.

Boeing said January 29 that it was withdrawing a request for a key safety exemption that would have allowed regulators to speed up the certification process for 737 MAX 7 jets. Lawmakers had been asking the platemaker to withdraw the petition after a mid-air cabin blowout took place on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5.