Boeing – An Engineer to Lead the Company after Dave Calhoun

A LATAM Boeing 787 Dreamliner the most technologically advanced plane Boeing has produced to date. The aircraft features carbon composite components that make it particularly light and make the air in it easy to breathe for passengers an aircraft who's fuselage is produced by Spirit Aerosystems

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Alex Achille

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It’s already been several months since Dave Calhoun announced he’d step down as president and CEO of Boeing before 2024 is over. Since then, there has been little more than speculation regarding who would take his place as leader of the American aircraft manufacturing firm. Well, the search is over, in just a few days Boeing will have its new president and CEO.

An Engineer to Lead Boeing Once Again

Way too often we have all thought in the past years that Boeing has lost its soul as an engineering firm. Too often it felt like the company was managed putting accounting before anything else. At instances it felt like the company had forgotten that its main mission and goal is to design and build planes. Many pinpoint the shift of focus to accounting to the merger with McDonnell-Douglas. Yes, that is probably where things started going sour.

After the 777 project the company hasn’t really innovated as much as you would expect from the oldest major aircraft manufacturer in the world. Yes, sure the 787, but we all know how that went with Boeing outsourcing much of the design and production process and facing major quality issues. All while Airbus, Boeing’s main rival, was making huge advancements in both its narrow and wide body projects taking over huge chunks of market share.

Finally, though we have the name of the new Boeing president and CEO. Robert K. “Kelly” Ortberg will be the next Boeing CEO starting August 8th 2024. An engineer taking over an engineering firm.

Boeing 777-300ER in fase di decollo, aereo sul quale è possibile volare sfruttando le miglia frequent flyer Flying Blue
Boeing 777-300ER in fase di decollo.

Kelly Ortberg’s Background and Prior Experience

At a first glance Kelly Ortberg checks all the boxes for the role of Boeing CEO. I already talked about his education, with him being an engineer. That aside he’s had a great deal of experience in leadership positions of companies working in the aerospace industry.

In his 35 years of experience, he has worked for:

  • Texas Instruments
  • Rockwell Collins (also as CEO)
  • RTX

Now he faces the biggest challenge yet of his career. He’ll have to steer Boeing back on the path for success and lead the company back to being number one in the industry.

First issues to tackle are the quality assurance problems that have afflicted Boeing in recent months. Also, get the certification of the 777x and the 737 MAX 7 and 10 done.

On a longer-term he needs to start thinking of a 737 replacement. A lot of energy and effort will have to go into that, as Boeing cannot afford to fail, yet again.

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Alex Achille Avatar
Ex Emirates Cabin Crew and long time aviation enthusiast. I can remember loving aviation and planes since I was a very little boy. I have developed my passion into a deep knowledge of the sector and industry to offer on my sites in depth and precise analyses of what is going on. I also completed cabin crew training with Ryanair, however, I never worked for the company (more on that another time). Finally I also have taken flying lessons completing my first solo flights.