Boeing has named Robert K. “Kelly” Ortberg as the company’s new president and chief executive officer effective 8 August. Ortberg will serve on Boeing’s board of directors. He succeeds Dave Calhoun, who earlier this year announced his intention to retire from the company.
“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,” said Steven Mollenkopf, chairman of the board. “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. We look forward to working with him as he leads Boeing through this consequential period in its long history.”
“I’m extremely honoured and humbled to join this iconic company,” said Ortberg. “Boeing has a tremendous and rich history as a leader and pioneer in our industry, and I’m committed to working together with the more than 170,000 dedicated employees of the company to continue that tradition, with safety and quality at the forefront. There is much work to be done, and I’m looking forward to getting started.”
Ortberg, 64, brings over 35 years of aerospace leadership to this position. He began his career in 1983 as an engineer at Texas Instruments, and then joined Rockwell Collins in 1987 as a program manager and held increasingly important leadership positions at the company prior to becoming its president and CEO in 2013. After five years leading Rockwell Collins, he steered the company’s integration with United Technologies and RTX until his retirement from RTX in 2021. He has held a number of important leadership posts in industry, including serving on the Board of Directors of RTX. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Directors of Aptiv PLC, a global technology company and an industry leader in vehicle systems architecture. He is the former Chair of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) Board of Governors. Ortberg holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Iowa.
One of Ortberg’s first duties will be to get Boeing back on the right track when it comes to safety and deal with the fallout from two 737 MAX crashes that killed 346 people. Boeing recently agreed to plead guilty to a US government criminal conspiracy charge that is being challenged in court by the families of the crash victims.
Those families said in a statement that “The arrival of a new CEO at Boeing could not have happened at a more crucial and necessary time for the safety of the traveling public around the world. As a company, Boeing has been nose-diving in self-destructive flight under the past leadership of (former CEO Dennis) Muilenburg, Calhoun and the do-nothing board of directors. This move may give the company the ability to pull out of its impending total and fatal crash, unlike what occurred to the 346 innocent victims of the two Boeing 737 Max 8 preventable disasters. While this man is an industry insider, he does come from outside of Boeing and on the face of it has a well-regarded reputation in the industry. Maybe he can bring the company back to the stature it once held before it criminally and preventively killed 346 people.”
Boeing also posted its earnings for the latest quarter, saying it lost $1.44 billion in the June quarter and said it was hurt by its military business. The company also said it is being hurt because of limits place on how many 737 MAX jets it can produce as it works to resolve its safety issues. It is also grappling with supplier shortages slowing production of its lucrative wide-body aircraft. The company burned through $4.3 billion in the latest quarter, more than in the March quarter when it took a $3.9 billion hit. Brian West, the company’s finance chief, warned the company would burn more cash this year than previously thought, driven in part to the production delays and decisions to take on more inventory from parts makers.
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