3/25/24- With respect to yogibearbull's post, following is an edited
current report from NPR:WASHINGTON — Boeing announced on Monday that its embattled CEO, Dave Calhoun, will step down at the end of year. The planemaker and aerospace company also said its board chairman, Larry Kellner, will not stand for re-election and the president of its commercial airplanes division, Stan Deal, will retire effective immediately.
The leadership shakeup comes after several difficult months following the in-flight door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max jet in January above Portland, Ore.
"The Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing," Calhoun wrote in a letter to Boeing employees. "The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company."
Boeing had also come under growing pressure from its biggest customers, the airlines: "Boeing needs to become a better company," said Bob Jordan, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, during an investor conference earlier this month. "I, and I know other CEOs, have told Boeing, get your issues understood and get the issues fixed," Jordan said. "Because we all need Boeing to be stronger two years from now, five years from now, ten years from now."
The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that a group of airline CEOs was set to meet with the board of Boeing this week — and that Calhoun would not be present.
It wasn't immediately clear why Boeing chose this moment to announce the management shakeup. But some of the company's loudest critics say it was the right move, regardless.
Richard Aboulafia, a longtime industry analyst and the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, says there was mounting dissatisfaction with the company's leadership.
"Dissatisfaction among everyone, from the airline customers to financiers to investors to regulators and Congress, all the way down to the traveling public," Aboulafia said in an interview. "Given all that tremendous dissatisfaction bordering on anger, I think this very clearly had to happen."
"It's a long road back," Aboulafia said. "The most important thing is to transform the company's culture and to restore those links between the people at the top and people who design and build aircraft. That's going to take some time. And a lot of it depends on who gets the new top job and other jobs. But at least now, for the first time in years, there's hope."
3/12/24- Following is an unedited
current report from NPR:
Police in Charleston, S.C., are investigating the death of John Barnett, a former Boeing quality control manager who became a whistleblower when he went public with his concerns about serious safety issues in the company's commercial airplanes.
Barnett's body was found in a vehicle in a Holiday Inn parking lot in Charleston on Saturday, police said. One day earlier, he testified about the string of problems he says he identified at Boeing's plant where he once helped inspect the 787 aircraft before delivery to customers.
Police say officers were sent to the hotel to conduct a welfare check after people were unable to contact Barnett, who had traveled to Charleston to testify in his lawsuit against Boeing.
"Upon their arrival, officers discovered a male inside a vehicle suffering from a gunshot wound to the head," police said in a statement sent to NPR. "He was pronounced deceased at the scene."
The office of Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo O'Neal said that Barnett, who had been living in Louisiana after retiring from Boeing, died "from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound."
Charleston police say detectives are actively investigating the case and are awaiting a formal cause of death as they try to determine the circumstances surrounding Barnett's death.
Barnett, who spent decades working for Boeing at its plants in Everett, Wash., and North Charleston, S.C., had repeatedly alleged that Boeing's manufacturing practices had declined — and that rather than improve them, he added, managers had pressured workers not to document potential defects and problems.
Barnett, 62, made international headlines in April of 2019 when he and other former Boeing employees spoke to The New York Times about what he called shoddy manufacturing problems at Boeing. Barnett accused the company of adopting a culture that prioritized raw numbers and profits over quality — and by extension, passenger safety.
"As a quality manager at Boeing, you're the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public," Barnett told the newspaper. "And I haven't seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I'd put my name on saying it's safe and airworthy."
By the time the article appeared, Barnett had already filed a whistleblower complaint against Boeing, saying that his attempts to raise quality and safety problems had been ignored and that he was punished for continuing to flag them.
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In an investigation with The New York Times, FRONTLINE examines the commercial pressures, flawed design and failed oversight behind Boeing’s 737 Max jet and the crashes that killed 346 people.
An update to this investigation will be available on {PBS} March 12, 2024.
CEO(as noted by @BaluBalu) is an electrical engineer who once ran Qualcomm.https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/steven-m-mollenkopf-bio
https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2024-03-25-Boeing-Announces-Board-and-Management-Changes
WASHINGTON — Boeing announced on Monday that its embattled CEO, Dave Calhoun, will step down at the end of year. The planemaker and aerospace company also said its board chairman, Larry Kellner, will not stand for re-election and the president of its commercial airplanes division, Stan Deal, will retire effective immediately.
The leadership shakeup comes after several difficult months following the in-flight door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max jet in January above Portland, Ore.
"The Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing," Calhoun wrote in a letter to Boeing employees. "The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company."
Boeing had also come under growing pressure from its biggest customers, the airlines: "Boeing needs to become a better company," said Bob Jordan, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, during an investor conference earlier this month. "I, and I know other CEOs, have told Boeing, get your issues understood and get the issues fixed," Jordan said. "Because we all need Boeing to be stronger two years from now, five years from now, ten years from now."
The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that a group of airline CEOs was set to meet with the board of Boeing this week — and that Calhoun would not be present.
It wasn't immediately clear why Boeing chose this moment to announce the management shakeup. But some of the company's loudest critics say it was the right move, regardless.
Richard Aboulafia, a longtime industry analyst and the managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, says there was mounting dissatisfaction with the company's leadership.
"Dissatisfaction among everyone, from the airline customers to financiers to investors to regulators and Congress, all the way down to the traveling public," Aboulafia said in an interview. "Given all that tremendous dissatisfaction bordering on anger, I think this very clearly had to happen."
"It's a long road back," Aboulafia said. "The most important thing is to transform the company's culture and to restore those links between the people at the top and people who design and build aircraft. That's going to take some time. And a lot of it depends on who gets the new top job and other jobs. But at least now, for the first time in years, there's hope."
Thanks for all you do.