Boeing can return to its most important values
According to analysts, Kelly Ortberg will be the CEO of Boeing, a professional with an engineering background and several decades of experience in the aviation industry who can bring a new perspective to the company, which closed the last quarter with a huge loss, and with him the iconic company can return to its roots.
Kelly Ortberg, President and CEO of Boeing. (Source: Boeing)
The 64-year-old Ortberg will assume the position of president and CEO from August 8 and will also be a member of the company’s board of directors.
The specialist replaces David Calhoun, who came to the head of the company in 2020 during the crisis caused by the 737 MAX disasters , his retirement announced this spring due to serious problems related to the production, quality and flight safety of Boeing types that still exist today .
Ortberg earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Iowa in 1982, then the following year he was employed as an engineer at Texas Instruments, in 1987 he joined Rockwell Collins, by 2013 he held the position of CEO of the company, which was already operating under the name Rockwell, and then the company in 2018 as, he became the first person at Collins Aerospace, and a member of the board of directors of the parent company RTX until 2021.
With the appointment of Kelly Ortberg, who has more than 35 years of professional experience, the company ended months of uncertainty since the announcement of Calhoun’s retirement, and it was almost unanimously considered by prominent industry analysts to be the best decision possible.
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By selecting Ortberg, Boeing is returning to its engineering roots and moving away from the management that has dominated the company for several decades, focusing mainly on financial matters, aviation industry analyst Richard Aboulafia opined, according to Flightglobal . He added: the specialist represents a completely opposite approach compared to the previous management.
This is also indicated by the fact that, according to industry sources, Ortberg’s office will be in Seattle, the city that has been home to Boeing’s development and manufacturing activities for decades. As is known, the company previously moved its headquarters and management board to the “ivory tower” in Chicago, far from the factories, and later to the political center of the United States , near the capital, partly for the purpose of tax optimization.
Boeing released its second quarter financial results on July 31, according to which the company’s loss widened significantly to US$1.4 billion, compared to a loss of US$149 million in the same quarter last year.
Of this, the commercial machinery business posted a loss of $715 million, which is almost double last year’s loss.
Meanwhile, the company achieved a revenue of 16.9 billion dollars, which is 15 percent lower than in the second quarter of last year, and the revenue of the commercial machinery business was even more significant, by 32 percent, due to stuttering deliveries caused by quality and production problems.
As we wrote earlier , Boeing delivered only 92 commercial aircraft in the second quarter, which is also 32 percent below the performance of the same period last year.
Boeing, on the other hand, has now confirmed: its goal remains to increase the output of the 737 production line to 38 units per month by the end of this year, and they would make five Dreamliners per month. According to them, the company expects the authority to lift its previous restriction on the former , which was ordered due to the problems that surfaced after the Alaska accident in January .
