As most have heard, Dave Calhoun, CEO of Boeing is resigning, effective at the end of 2024. Other top executives are following him, including Boeing Chair Larry Kellner, and Steve Mollenkopf. Stan Deal, the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is retiring and will be replaced immediately by Stephanie Pope.
Calhoun’s memo to employees can be read in full here: Boeing CEO Calhoun’s Memo. After all the turmoil, several things are becoming clearer. The American public has lost faith in what was the world’s premier aircraft manufacturer. They are not alone. Though not often in U.S. news, Airbus has also had its issues. Be it the stiff competition between them or the rush for economic growth, the flying public on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to question flying safety.
Not all fault falls with the manufacturers, some lies with the airlines themselves in their maintenance regimens, and the FAA and NTSB in their oversight.
Rep. Rick Larsen (WA-02), the lead Democrat on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and our local representative that includes Paine Field in Everett had the following to say: “The Boeing Company needs to get back to what it has done best: designing and engineering the safest and best airplanes in the world. That starts with Boeing getting back to its roots as an engineering company and away from its multi-decades focus of being a financial services company.
“Moving forward, the women and men who work at Boeing need leaders who match their commitment to safety and quality at every step of the plane making process. Boeing’s new leadership team must work hard to earn back the trust of its customers and the flying public.”
Boeing dates to 1916 when the American timber merchant William E. Boeing founded Aero Products Company shortly after he and U.S. Navy officer Conrad Westervelt developed a single-engine, two-seat seaplane. Renamed Boeing Airplane Company in 1917, the enterprise built “flying boats” for the Navy during World War I, and in the 1920’s and ’30s it sold its trainers, pursuit planes, observation craft, torpedo planes, and patrol bombers to the U.S. military.
Long a fixture of Seattle history, many remember the great recession in the late 60’s with billboards saying will the last person out of Seattle, turn off the lights. They survived, and they will again with a lot of work.
Many blame the move of headquarters to Chicago, or the diversification which built a plant in North Carolina, and claim they need to reconsolidate and put it all under one roof again. Like a Phoenix, they will again rise from the ashes. Their workers and the public deserve it, and locally support them.
