Few companies have taken a reputation hit quite as hard as aircraft-making giant Boeing (BA) .
Back in March, then-chief executive Dave Calhoun stepped down amid a federal investigation over the blown-out door plug on a 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines (ALK) plane in January 2024 revealed multiple oversights and flubbed safety procedures. It didn’t help that whistleblowers like John Barnett, a South Carolina plane quality engineer who was about to give a court deposition over retaliation from his former employer he said he faced when he voiced safety concerns, was later found dead in mysterious circumstances.
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Boeing started out August by announcing that it had tapped 64-year-old Robert “Kelly” Ortberg to replace Calhoun as the head of the aircraft maker. Ortberg spent the last decade at the helm of the aviation technology company Rockwell Collins that was rebranded as Collins Aerospace and acquired by RTX (RTX) in 2018.
‘Experienced leader who is deeply respected in the aerospace industry’
Ortberg had retired from the company in 2021 but was pulled out of retirement by the team looking for a new person to lead Boeing out of its current predicament.
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“Kelly is an experienced leader who is deeply respected in the aerospace industry, with a well-earned reputation for building strong teams and running complex engineering and manufacturing companies,” Boeing Board Chairman Steven Mollenkopf wrote in a note to employees that was sent out before the news went public.
Ortberg has not been made available for interviews with the press and instead issued a single statement saying that “there much work to be done” that he’s “looking forward to getting started.”
The long to-do list includes guiding the company through the federal investigation over improper safety practices that in some cases go back decades, improving the company’s balance sheet after the hits it took from stalled production of the 737 Max 9 and improving morale among employees and Boeing’s general reputation with the public.
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‘Is he prepared to spend the 10 years it’s going to take to restore Boeing?’
In its latest earnings release, Boeing announced a loss of $2.90 per adjusted share and a second-quarter revenue decline of 15% to $16.866 billion. The producer also recently pled guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and agreed to pay a $243.6 million fine over how it handled the investigation of the two 737 Max crashes that occurred within a few months of each other in October 2018 and March 2019.
“This is not a five-year fix-it,” Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and executive fellow at Harvard Business School, told Reuters. “Is he prepared to spend the 10 years it’s going to take to restore Boeing?”
At the same time as it announced Calhoun’s forced retirement, Boeing also said that it was ousting Head Of Commercial Aviation Stan Deal and Board Of Directors Chair Larry Kellner; their replacements are yet to be announced.
“The Board conducted a thorough and extensive search process over the last several months to select the next CEO of Boeing and Kelly has the right skills and experience to lead Boeing in its next chapter,” Mollenkopf said further in his statement.
