Boeing executives reportedly rejected a safety system in the 737 Max because it was too expensive

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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg at a press conference after Boeing's annual shareholders meeting in Chicago in April.

• A senior Boeing engineer filed a complaint following the grounding of the 737 Max jet earlier this year, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
• The employee said company executives opted for a cheaper safety solution over other options while the plane was still in development.
• The 737 Max remains grounded and is still undergoing regulatory processes to fly again.
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Shortly after the deadly crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets, an employee filed an internal complaint about the plane's development, The New York Times' Natalie Kitroeff, David Gelles and Jack Nicas reported Wednesday.

Additionally, federal investigators looking into the two crashes - and how the plane was certified to fly in the first place - have questioned at least one former Boeing employee regarding the complaint made by a senior engineer, the Paper reported.

"I was willing to stand up for safety and quality, but was unable to actually have an effect in those areas," the engineer, Curtis Ewbank, said in the complaint. "Boeing management was more concerned with cost and schedule than safety or quality."

A Boeing representative told The New York Times that safety was core to all of the company's values.

"Boeing offers its employees a number of channels for raising concerns and complaints and has rigorous processes in place, both to ensure that such complaints receive thorough consideration and to protect the confidentiality of employees who make them," the company told the New York Times.

Shares of Boeing were down about 2.6% in trading Wednesday and remain about 17% off their highs from before the plane's grounding.

Boeing's 737 max has been grounded since March, after the crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Air, forcing airlines to cancel flights and change schedules to accommodate for the unavailable planes.

Preliminary reports from investigations into the two crashes suggested that there were problems with the sensor readings which affected the planes' MCAS system. Those malfunctions caused the planes to nosedive, thinking the plane was pitched more vertically than it actually was.

Experts have criticised Boeing's decision to have the plane rely on just one sensor input.

The plane will not fly again until regulators in the US and around the world approve Boeing's fixes - a process that most in the industry do not expect to be completed until the end of 2019 at the earliest.

Sinéad Baker contributed to this report.

• Airlines have been flying empty Boeing 737 Max planes around the world as they scramble to get ready for its return to service
• Boeing just announced that it's reorganizing its safety oversight, implementing lessons learned during the 737 Max fiasco
• European regulators say they'll test the fixed 737 Max themselves, rather than trusting the FAA's findings
• 'I could never live with myself': The parents of a Boeing 737 Max victim explain why they chose to campaign to prevent another disaster, rather than 'go to bed' and grieve

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