Following fatal crashes, Boeing plans to cut rate of 737 production

Boeing Co plans to cut the rate of its 737 productions to 42 airplanes per month from 52 as it works to manage the grounding of its MAX aircraft in the wake of two deadly crashes, Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement on Friday.

Muilenburg said the company now knows that a chain of events caused Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents, with erroneous activation of so-called MCAS anti-stall software "a common link" between the two.

The company continues to make progress on a 737 MAX software update to prevent "accidents like these from ever happening again," he said.