Boeing CEO leaving

Boeing is just following a general decline like most things once great in the good ‘ole USA.
-lack of standards?
-poor edge u cation?
-greed?
-politics?

 

"Professional Managers". You get the wrong kind and they will destroy any brand. A major part of the problem is their Board of Directors:


Board of Directors
Robert A. Bradway Chairman and CEO, Amgen Inc.
David L. Calhoun President and CEO, The Boeing Company
Lynne M. Doughtie Former U.S. Chairman and CEO, KPMG
David L. Gitlin Chairman and CEO, Carrier Global Corporation
Lynn J. Good Chairman, President and CEO, Duke Energy Corporation
Stayce D. Harris Former United Airlines Pilot; Former Inspector General, U.S. Air Force
Akhil Johri Former Executive Vice President and CFO, United Technologies Corporation
David L. Joyce Former President and CEO, GE Aviation; Former Vice Chair, General Electric Company
Lawrence W. Kellner, Chair of the Board Former Chairman and CEO, Continental Airlines, Inc.
Steven M. Mollenkopf Former CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
John M. Richardson 31st Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy; Former Director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, U.S. Navy
Sabrina Soussan Chairman and CEO, SUEZ SA
Ronald A. Williams Former Chairman, President and CEO, Aetna Inc.


One airplane person is not enough.

 

And as he leaves he appoints a 30-year Boeing exec to head commercial.......she'll stir up the crew!.........or maybe not?.........

 

Sounds like she came up through the Defense side of the company, which is to say McDonnel Douglas. Here colleges were both St. Louis area. What they need is a Seattle background person.

McDonnel Douglas' mentality of making the most risk adverse conservative business decisions possible is what led them to be the acquired company. Yet somehow the losing company in the acquisition became the C suite winners.

Trace this all back to when Mulally left for Ford after being passed over in Seattle. I think we can also look back to when Boeing had the epiphany (as stupid as it was) that they needed to move HQ to Chicago.

 

Its like the government. Whatever Boeing is doing, good or bad was the doing of this group. Hard to believe all the rot was just 2 people.
Small club and they look out for each other. I'd like to see what other boards they currently sit on. Few are ever just on one board.

 

Everything would be just fine if they had more diversity hires

 

Exactly +1000%
Unstill this changes the rest is shuffling cards.

 

I look at the board and grasp the reasoning for some of them. Boeing needs to suck up to the military so there have to be some high level retired types. They need to suck up to the airlines so that puts a couple of those types around. With the nature of the engine world being Pratt & Whitney/UTC and GE they got some from that world (although I question if that is really the right place since both of them, as well as R-R, are having serious product problems

If the engine folks are considered as good for the board what about the avionics and systems types?

What I am not seeing is anyone from a manufacturing company that has to make massive investments for long production runs.

 

We can agree though that companies are run by the board and the board has failed. It needs a largely new board.
Changing Calhoun and one or two execs, weve seen this movie 3x before at boeing.

 

Looking at this board's make up it makes me wonder if the Boeing CEO is letting the Boeing Commercial leadership voice get to the board. Of course the BCAG (commercial aircraft group) leadership may be stuffed suits that saw what wants to be heard despite reality? If the board actually cared they would meet individually with a number of BCAG leaders to drill down until they get the unvarnished truth. Might cost some jobs but that would be an improvement. Doers vs politicians.

I continue to believe that BCAG still has some great people but they may be hidden by too many weasels.

 

Po boy. I feel his pain.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/investing/boeing-ceo-millions-nightcap/index.html

Boeing’s embattled CEO is poised to walk away with millions

 

Tim Clark at Emirates is quite vocal in the industry and is willing to be public with his opinions. We shall have to wait and see if anyone inside the board room is bothering to listen.

My vote would be for Mulally. He would have the opportunity to tell the board what they don't want to hear. He would not be looking for a long tenure at his age but would be motivated to prove just how wrong Boeing was to pass him over last time.


Since its founding by William Boeing more than a century ago, the Boeing Company has had 12 CEOs. The 13th might be the most important yet.

As Boeing begins its search for a new CEO, the company is facing its worst-ever crisis. It has struggled through more than five years of safety incidents and bad news that created unprecedented doubt about the quality of its aircraft.

It faces multiple federal investigations into its commercial plane practices, as well as an outcry from the airline customers that buy its planes.

In addition to two fatal crashes that cost 346 lives, the company has run up more than $31 billion in losses since 2019, with no end to the red ink in sight. It has grabbed unwanted attention with incidents like a blown-out door plug that left a gaping hole in an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Those incidents were followed by Monday’s decision by the current CEO, Dave Calhoun, to step down by the end of the year, leaving the company to search for a new chief executive.

What Boeing wants in its new CEO
When picking a new CEO, the company likely has two pools of choices.

It can go with someone who has an engineering background, as was the background of many of the past CEOs who led the company in its heyday. Four of the company’s first five CEOs were engineers by training, running the company for 46 of the first 70 years of Boeing’s existence.

Or it can once again pick a leader like outgoing CEO Calhoun, who has a financial background and an undergraduate degree in accounting. Critics have said an increased focus on financial results over engineering excellence over the last 25 years has led to the company’s current problems.

Some say it’s crucial that Boeing get back to its engineering roots in its next CEO.

“To fix Boeing’s issues the company needs a strong engineering lead as its head coupled to a governance model which prioritizes safety and quality,” said Sir Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airlines, which ordered 373 planes from Boeing since 2009, but only two of those since 2019. “Whether, yet again, this changing of the guard will resolve Boeing’s issues only time will tell, but time, unfortunately, is not on their side.”

In an interview with CNBC on Monday morning, Calhoun was asked about what he wants to see in his successor.

“I want somebody who knows how to handle a big, long, long-cycle business like ours,” Calhoun said. “It’s not just the production of the airplane. It’s the development of the next airplane. It will be a $50 billion investment. I would like somebody who clearly has the experience inside our industry.”

Calhoun did not give any potential names, or say whether Boeing is looking more at internal or outside candidates. But a number of potential choices are surfacing, according to Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

Pat Shanahan
Pat Shanahan is the “top of the list,” according to Aboulafia. A former Boeing executive for 31 years, he became known as “Mr. Fix It” at the company for dealing with various problems during his tenure.

He was deputy secretary of the US Department of Defense under President Donald Trump and was nominated to be secretary, serving nearly six months in an acting capacity in 2019. His name was withdrawn before his confirmation due to media reports involving domestic incidents involving violent actions by his son and ex-wife.

He has held a number of different posts in the years since, and in September became CEO of Boeing’s major supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages for the Boeing 737 Max among other items.

Spirit AeroSystems faces its own safety and quality issues, which have caused problems for Boeing, forcing temporary halts of production on some jets. But most of those problems occurred before Shanahan took the CEO job there.

Boeing is in talks to reacquire Spirit, the companies confirmed, which would be something of a homecoming. Spirit was part of Boeing before the larger company spun it off in 2005.

If Boeing acquires Spirit, it’s possible Shanahan would be tapped as Boeing’s next CEO as part of the merger.

Most of the companies where candidates mentioned in this story now work declined to comment when questioned by CNN or did not respond to a request for comment. Spirit was the only one to comment, but it did not address the possibility of Shanahan becoming Boeing CEO.

“Mr. Shanahan remains solely focused on driving a zero-defects culture across all aspects of Spirit AeroSystems,” said Joe Buccino, a Spirit spokesperson.

Larry Culp
Larry Culp has already turned around one major American industrial icon, becoming CEO of General Electric in 2018 and spinning off many of the company’s parts. One of the parts that remains is GE Aerospace, which makes engines used on Boeing jets and other planes.

Under its longtime CEO Jack Welch, GE grew to corporate success with a strong focus on cutting costs to improve financial performance. Three of the last four Boeing CEOs, including Calhoun, spent part of their careers at GE. Some Boeing critics say those CEOs’ emphasis on the GE playbook of cost cutting, profitability and shareholders rewards rather than quality was the source of much of Boeing’s current problems.

But Culp has moved GE away from the Jack Welch era, a time when Calhoun and some of the other earlier Boeing CEOs cut their teeth, said Aboulafia.

Culp joined GE as an outsider in 2018 after spending 24 years at Danaher Corp., moving up the ranks to CEO from 2000 to 2014. Many industrial analysts believe Danaher, during Culp’s tenure, outperformed GE and many other manufacturing and industrial companies during that time. Culp has an undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA from Harvard, a business background more than an engineering background.

“I know he’s done incredibly well at Danaher and GE. This is a new GE. Culp is being very open to being transformative,” he said. “They needed to escape from that Jack Welch culture. What looks like a negative is actually a positive.”

GE did not comment when asked about whether Culp would be interested in the Boeing job.

Kathy Warden
Kathy Warden has had a lot of success as CEO of Northrop Grumman since she began in the company’s top job at the start of 2019.

The military contractor’s revenues have grown 30% during that period. Its stock price has nearly doubled under her tenure. And while Northrop doesn’t make commercial jets, Boeing is also a major defense contractor in addition to a commercial aircraft maker. Warden has an MBA and worked at GE for a decade and two other industrial companies before joining Northrop.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Aboulafia said. “I don’t now how you’d convince her to make that leap, but she’d be perfect.”

One reason that the Boeing board might be interested in her, besides her success, is what’s known as the “glass cliff” phenomenon, in which companies, especially those in male dominated fields like tech or manufacturing, are more open to looking at women CEOs when they’re in trouble.

Think of General Motors picking Mary Barra to be the first woman to run a major global automaker just before a major crisis — the ignition switch problem that killed more than 100 drivers and passengers and cost the company billions — became public. Sometimes the new woman CEO is not as successful as Barra in steering the company through the crisis, and thus a woman who has shattered the “glass ceiling” finds herself pushed off the “glass cliff.”

Greg Smith
Greg Smith left his post as CFO of Boeing soon after the company’s board granted a five-year waiver of the normal retirement age limit of 65 to Calhoun in 2021. Smith, who was 54 at the time, clearly saw his path to the CEO job had been blocked.

Since he left, he joined a number of corporate boards, most notably American Airlines, where he serves as chairman.

RIght now, one of Boeing’s biggest problems is relations with its airline customers, many of whom are frustrated with repeated missed deadlines to deliver new jets, groundings by regulators and for the quality of the jets it is delivering.

One way for the Boeing board to signal it is listening to those customer concerns would be to name someone who now is on the airlines’ side of that crucial relationship but who also has experience with Boeing. That describes Smith. But picking him would also mean another CEO with a finance background rather than an engineering background.

Alan Mulally
Aboulafia suggested there could be a number of executives who have left Boeing who might be good fits if they could come back, although their age could be an issue.

At the top of that list is Alan Mulally. He was a long-time veteran of the Boeing Commercial Airplane unit, rising to be its CEO. He left Boeing in 2006 to become CEO of Ford. At the time, Ford was struggling more than the other Detroit automakers, GM and DaimlerChrysler, as Chrysler was then known.

Mulally helped turn around the company, which allowed Ford to be the only Detroit automaker to avoid a federal bailout and bankruptcy, as GM and Chrysler experienced three years later. He retired from Ford in 2014 with a nest egg worth nearly $300 million thanks to the turnaround the stock experienced during his eight years on the job. Mulally has degrees in aeronautical engineering and in management.

It’s not clear if Mulally, now 78, would want to come out of retirement for a challenge as big as turning around Boeing. He did not respond to an email from CNN about the job on Monday.

It’s also not clear if the Boeing board would consider someone that old. But in a year in which the US presidential election appears likely to pit an 81-year old candidate versus a 77-year old candidate, it seems tough to argue a well respected 78-year-old is too old to run Boeing.

Internal candidates
Normally, internal candidates might be seen as the likely picks to replace Calhoun. Most of the 12 CEOs in Boeing’s history were internal candidates, with Calhoun being an exception.

However, the problems at Boeing during the last five years could lead the board to give preference to outside candidates.

“Boeing is in need of drastic cultural overall, which is cultivated from the top, but sprouts from the bottom,” said Bank of America aerospace analyst Ron Epstein in a note to clients Monday. “We see the changes [announced Monday] as the first right steps of removing the ‘old guard’ and making way for a new team which can work from a less sullied slate.”

But among the internal candidates who might be considered are Stephanie Pope, who has been rising rapidly at Boeing and was promoted to chief operating officer just this past January. She was then promoted to CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes on Monday.



Another internal candidate could be CFO Brian West, another GE veteran, having served as CFO of GE Aviation and CFO GE Engine Services before coming to Boeing. Both Pope and West come from a finance background, not an engineering background.

It’s also possible that Boeing could tap Elizabeth Lund, who is senior vice president of quality at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, a new position that was created just a month ago. She does have an engineering background and experience dealing with Boeing suppliers, a major issue for the company’s efforts to get back on track.

“I don’t know her, but she’s well regarded,” Aboulafia said.

A Boeing spokesperson declined to provide any comments on behalf of any of the internal candidates.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/how-boeings-leadership-was-fired-by-its-own-customers-2024-03-27/

 

Larry Culp would be great, but I would be surprised if he wanted to take on another challenge of that magnitude.

 

Apparently, Culp has already made public statements that he is not interested in the Boeing position. Is that the real answer or part of the "hard to get" positioning?

Already regular press is throwing out stories that are touting candidates. Today is one from the Wall Street Journal pushing Stephanie Pope. A few days ago saw one pushing the current interim chairman because he did well with Qualcomm during a difficult period. Looks to me like some of the ambitious but unworthy are cranking up their PR minions. What they need is someone that knows aviation manufacturing and product development. No ex-GE corporates, no ex-McDonnel Douglas, no ex-Boeing military, no finance weenies.

I don't know about the other segments of Boeing but the Boeing Business Jet leader has been a revolving door. They bring in someone who claims that they will be there and get to know the clients. Instead they get moved in about a year - not long enough to do any damage but not long enough to do any good either. I question if they even learned enough about this segment of the business and their clients to have ever been effective. I can say that lack of continuity of leadership is a concern by the owner/operators but Boeing corporate has not cared.

 

Another touted CEO candidate. Or is this all just part of the PR machine for each person trying to get the job?

Spirit isn't doing too well on their own quality though that goes unmentioned as this guy is promoted as the new savior.

Boeing’s search for a new CEO ranks as the most closely watched succession drama in decades. If the manufacturing icon makes the wrong choice, its airline customers won’t get the planes they desperately need in the years ahead, raising prices and cutting frequency of travel for the 2.2 billion people who fly each year. It’s now clear that the directors’, regulators’, and Wall Street’s view of what the legendary planemaker needs in a new leader has totally changed since the notorious blowout over Portland, Ore., on Jan. 5 exposed manifold flaws in its manufacturing processes and procedures. Last year, the odds strongly favored a veteran insider, and like all its CEOs from the past two decades, not anyone bringing deep experience on the factory floor. Now, the likely choice is a newcomer offering detailed knowledge of how planes get built, a radical change agent determined to restore high-quality production, on-schedule deliveries, and great aerospace expertise, as opposed to financial engineering, job one.

The Alaska Airlines cataclysm upends Boeing’s old succession plan
On March 25, Boeing unveiled a sudden upheaval in its C-suite and boardroom. Its press release that day announced that David Calhoun will step down as CEO at year-end, and that chairman Larry Kellner, former head of Continental Airlines, will depart following the annual meeting on May 16, to be replaced by director Steve Mollenkopf, retired chief of Qualcomm. Stan Deal, the top executive at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is leaving the company, and Stephanie Pope, the COO, is taking Deal’s old job. It’s Mollenkopf who will lead the search for the next CEO.

Fortune interviewed sources that include past Boeing executives and current and former high-ranking figures in the aerospace industry to get their take on the qualifications needed in a new leader, and the candidates the board is most likely favoring right now. All of them chose to speak on background. On the sudden resignations and shake-up at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, they generally agreed that the board was responding to pressure from both airline customers and the FAA. Four days before the big reshuffling, airline CEOs made the extraordinary request to meet with Kellner sans Calhoun. “When your customers say they want to meet with your chairman, you know they want change at the top,” says one person to whom I spoke, and who added: “The board realized that the FAA can make things harder if today’s leadership stays in place.” Said a second source: “When all these guys at the top are immediately replaced or retire at the first opportunity, it would appear that the FAA had a hand in that.”

Just three weeks before the catastrophe aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, Boeing announced that Pope would ascend to chief operating officer on Jan. 1, making her heir apparent to Calhoun. Pope spent most of her three decades at Boeing in financial jobs, serving as CFO of both Global Services and Commercial Airplanes, and most recently headed Global Services, the unit that supports commercial and industry customers. Pope has proved an expert financial manager in an enterprise that—until the flood of safety issues—focused heavily on shareholder returns. She also apparently did a good job as a general manager. But according to my sources, financial acumen isn’t what’s needed going forward. “I was surprised that after all that happened, Boeing would put a former CFO in the top Commercial Airplanes job,” says one source. Though that move keeps Pope in the running, the people to whom I spoke believe that the board is now leaning heavily toward an outsider with the manufacturing chops to get things right at its giant plants in Renton and Everett, near Seattle, and in North Charleston, S.C.

A probable solution: A great manager who also understands manufacturing, paired with a production hawk who’s all over the factory floor
The big problem the board faces: Running Boeing requires a combination of skills that’s highly unusual, and tough to find in a single leader. “The CEO job at Boeing is so complicated,” explains one industry veteran. “You have all the public-facing and regulatory work to do, all the airline customers around the world, the constituency in Washington. To fill those roles, you need someone with stature and sophistication. And that isn’t always the same person who knows how to build airplanes.” The one obvious candidate blending the two talents is GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp, who greatly streamlined GE’s manufacturing engine, frequently touring the assembly lines in person and swapping ideas for moving parts faster and safer with welders and machinists. Culp also showed strong diplomatic skills in dealing with Congress and regulators. But Culp has declared he has no interest in leaving the engine-manufacturing business he’s done so much to make highly efficient and profitable.

The best solution for Boeing, say several sources, would probably be a split: naming a CEO who’s a great general manager, and a second-in-command who’s a hard-core, hands-on-the-levers production specialist. At the same time, the generalist CEO needs to be someone who’s headed manufacturing businesses and can delve into the details to tell if the engine’s sound or broken. He or she can’t be someone who believes all the smart thinking only happens in the C-suite, but embraces a mindset where management listens to the folks tightening the screws and fastening the panels. That overall approach would enable the second-in-command to work hand in glove with newly empowered workers and on-site managers so that each step in building these wonderful flying machines only moves forward when all parts and systems from the previous station are complete. That would end the costly, quality-destroying “traveled work” regime that forces workers to rush stations ahead, and install components out of sequence.

Right now, an excellent candidate looks like Dave Gitlin
As of today, the best prospect is probably Carrier Global CEO Dave Gitlin, who’s a Boeing director. The reason: Gitlin’s demonstrated excellence as an overall leader, and his long, broad career in aerospace, including plenty of experience observing what makes for an assembly line that’s an exemplar in quality control. At 54, he’s also the right age. Boeing needs a chief who has a runway of at least seven or eight years; it took decades to undermine its culture, and will require several years to institute a fresh obsession with quality and safety. Plus, it’s best if a single CEO can guide Boeing through the entire process of designing and building a “clean-sheet” successor to the 737 Max.

Gitlin earned a BA from Cornell, a JD from the University of Connecticut School of Law, and an MBA from MIT. He started his career as an attorney at Sundstrand, a manufacturer of electric power systems for the aerospace industry. After Hamilton, a unit of UTC (then United Technologies Corp.) that made airline carburetors, deicing systems, and engine mounts, bought Sundstrand to create its Hamilton Sundstrand unit in 1999, Gitlin moved into operations. At Hamilton Sundstrand, he cycled through six positions, which included overseeing its business with a top customer, engine maker Pratt & Whitney, also part of UTC, and serving as president of auxiliary power, engine, and control systems. In 2011, UTC bought Goodyear, a Charlotte-based maker of landing gear and jet-engine casings, to create UTC Aerospace Systems. Gitlin led the successful integration, and in 2013 ascended to president and COO of UTC Aerospace Systems.

In 2018, UTC purchased Rockwell Collins, producer of avionics and flight control systems. The $30 billion deal was one of the largest aerospace acquisitions in history. Gitlin rose to COO and president of the entire UTC aerospace unit, newly named Collins Aerospace. But UTC planned to spin off non-aerospace businesses, including its Otis elevator and Carrier heating, ventilation, and AC franchises. UTC named Gitlin as CEO of the soon-to-be independent Carrier Global. According to a former UTC manager I interviewed, the honor was well deserved: “He was so well respected at UTC for being an operating guy. He knew how to make the trains run on time; he was willing to get his fingernails dirty. UTC named him to run Carrier to show that it was putting an expert, smart leader of a manufacturing company in charge.”

At Carrier, Gitlin has assembled one of the best records of any manufacturing CEO in recent years. Since 2020, and despite the hammering from the pandemic, he’s lifted margins from 12.8% to 14.1%, and grown its highly lucrative aftermarkets business in the past two years by 22% to $5.5 billion. He’s also shed the security unit for $5 billion to focus where profitability is highest, in the core heating and refrigeration businesses. Since the spinoff in June 2019, Gitlin has delivered a cumulative 245% total return, or 37% annualized, a record that beats the S&P by 15 points. Under Gitlin, Carrier’s market cap has exploded by over $40 billion to $51 billion.

Landing Gitlin presents potential pitfalls, both for Boeing and on Gitlin’s end
Asked to comment on whether Gitlin is under consideration for the top job, or speak about the succession process, a Boeing spokesperson responded by email, "We don't have a comment on these topics." A source close to Carrier says that Gitlin is committed to the company. He now lives in Florida near Carrier’s headquarters in Palm Beach Gardens. My sources say that, as it stands now, Gitlin’s pedigree and record make him the best qualified contender. “He’s a very credible candidate if he wants it,” says a former high-ranking airline executive. There’s a strong possibility that the board will move Boeing’s HQ from Arlington, Va., back to Seattle, where most of the commercial planes, and most of the money, are made. "Seattle is where the headquarters should be," says one source who was a Boeing customer. Whether Gitlin would be willing to resettle in Seattle is a big unknown.

Boeing, as well as regulators and suppliers, could also have misgivings. Gitlin has been on the Boeing board since late June of 2022, and though it’s a short tenure, that he’s been a director during the time Boeing has made such a wrong turn could undermine his support. “The job he’s got now is really well paid and doesn’t have the same headaches as Boeing,” observes another industry stalwart. Landing Gitlin would also be expensive: It could cost Boeing around $150 million to replace the long-term compensation benefits awarded by Carrier.

Still, neither of those possible drawbacks should stand in his way—if the board is convinced that Gitlin is the right person.

Even so, Gitlin’s not the guy to fix the mechanics on the shop floor. He’ll need a partner to fulfill that absolutely essential second role. The only obvious choice is Pat Shanahan, a manufacturing whiz who camped out at the Everett plant in 2008 to fix the stalled 787 Dreamliner program. In October, he parachuted into Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, to repair the severe gaps in its quality controls. Boeing now plans to purchase Spirit, which it once owned, and hence bring fuselage production in-house. Shanahan also knows Boeing intimately, having worked at the planemaker for 30 years.

The rub: Shanahan will be 62 years old in June. He probably doesn’t have the comforting longevity Gitlin would provide, especially in arguably the highest-pressure production job on the planet. One of my sources sums up the issue: “Getting Gitlin in the top job instead of a pure manufacturing person opens another problem. He’ll need a partner. And as for now, it’s unclear who that could be.”

Another cautionary factor is at play. This will be the most scrutinized CEO search in history. If Gitlin's the choice, anything in his business history, including possible problems with products at businesses he's run, will be found and magnified. The same goes for any candidate the board anoints.

According to a manager who still works at Boeing, the workers there have just one condition, a reference to three out of Boeing’s past four leaders who came from the house Jack Welch built. “The running joke around the company is,” he quips, “whatever you do, don’t hire another CEO from GE!”

 

Suicide Mission
What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane


"Boeing was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing".


... By now you know what became of Swampy: He was found dead a few weeks ago with a gunshot wound to his right temple, “apparently” self-inflicted, on what was meant to be the third day of a three-day deposition in his whistleblower case against his former employer; his amended complaint, which his lawyer released last week, is the basis for much of this story.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

 

I think you answered your own question.

Not sure 8 levels of management even extends down past corporate headquarters Boeing became way too top heavy after merger with McDD. How many VP's does Boeing even have now? Back in mid 90's BCAG had 18 or so. The further up you go the less accountability there is, and everyone from bottom up just focuses on CYA and their little slice of the budget.

 

I wonder how important it really is for who the overall CEO versus BCAG making sure they get the right person as their president. That is to the extent that the CEO doesn't hinder the president doing what is needed.

 

The CEO controls the culture of the company, and the new CEO will (or should) be held accountable by the Board to fix the culture that permitted the last 20yrs of crap to occur (Dreamliner, MAX, 777X, etc).

 

I understand your point but I think that BCAG is the one that really needs the strong leader of the correct type. Let the CEO just not get in their way. I would suspect that the airlines and lease companies are more concerned about BCAG's leadership. Stephanie Pope doesn't stand a chance with the criteria that is imperative.

The pundits talk about only ex-Boeing and the other defense companies but what about top talent from Gulfstream and Cessna. Both successfully build aircraft and do new aircraft developments on time and meet their performance targets in the civilian market. The same cannot be said for Bombardier and anyone that goes back to when Raytheon owned Beechcraft.

 

Absolutely. Boeing needs a new head of BCAG and a CEO that defines an agenda to straighten the ship out.

 

Just ran across this story. Even if 1/2 is true, Boeing is past the point of recovery. Now is seems it's just the clock ticking before the next major software or structural failure occurs.