For a retiree from Florida, Robert “Kelly” Ortberg looks young and energetic in the official portrait that Boeing distributed with the news of his selection for the top job beginning August 8.

The 64-year-old aviation veteran – known in the industry as Kelly – was formerly CEO of the aviation supplier Rockwell Collins and entered the race to succeed current Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun late, after the election campaign had dragged on for a long time without a clear favorite emerging.

Calhoun had planned to stay in office until the end of the year, but he has since become what Americans call a “lame duck,” meaning he has been unable to push through any major new programs, such as a narrow-body aircraft to replace the old Boeing 737 family, which was used by launch customer Lufthansa in 1967.

The commercial department is a big burden

News of Kelly Ortberg’s appointment was announced on Wednesday last week (July 30), the same day Boeing announced dismal results for the quarter.

Boeing’s operating loss widened to $1.4 billion (€1.28 billion) in the second quarter, compared to a loss of $149 million in the same period last year. The result meant that Boeing had not had a profitable year since 2019 and has since accumulated massive operating losses totaling $33.3 billion.

Currently, the company is still trying to convince regulators that it has finally solved the serious safety and quality control problems in all of its current aircraft programs.

Due to these unresolved problems, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has capped Boeing’s production of the 737 MAX at 38 aircraft per month. To meet the high demand, Boeing is aiming to increase this to 50 MAX per month.

Boeing’s inward-looking, subdued state became clear at the end of July at the Farnborough Air Show outside London, one of the industry’s most important events. While neither Airbus nor Boeing received a flood of major orders, Boeing had severely limited its overall participation. Claiming that it wanted to focus on the most urgent safety and quality improvements, Boeing had not sent a single commercial aircraft to the major air show – an unprecedented move.

Stephanie Pope, CEO of Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes Division, appeared reserved and tight-lipped in her only official media appearance at the Farnborough event. She was one of the candidates to succeed Dave Calhoun, but many voices, and probably the board of directors, preferred an outside expert to get the aircraft manufacturer’s fortunes back under control.

Best choice for Boeing in “important phase”

“Kelly is an experienced leader who is highly respected in the aerospace industry and has earned a well-earned reputation for building strong teams and leading complex engineering and manufacturing organizations,” Boeing Chairman Steven Mollenkopf said in a statement following Ortberg’s appointment. “We look forward to working with him as he leads Boeing through this critical phase in its long history.”

Seldom has a top position been praised as unanimously as Ortberg’s. In the industry, he is considered an experienced professional and an efficient and personable leader.

“You couldn’t ask for a better selection,” aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told industry magazine Flightglobal.

Boeing shares reacted immediately to the news of Ortberg’s appointment. After an initial decline due to the financial results, they rose more than 1%. However, Boeing shares are still 28% below their value at the beginning of the year.

Focusing on stock price rather than product quality and safety was exactly the recipe for disaster that brought Boeing to where it is today. Since merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, adopting that smaller company’s strategy, the famous aircraft manufacturer has lost its technical clout but posted record profits and dividends.

Bringing order to Boeing

Now there is great hope that Kelly Ortberg will finally change course, and the early signs are encouraging for workers, analysts and even the families of the victims of the two fatal Boeing crashes in 2018 and 2019 that led to a long grounding of the 737 MAX aircraft.

“The arrival of a new CEO at Boeing could not have come at a more important and necessary time for the safety of travelers around the world,” CNN quoted Robert Clifford, the lawyer for the families of the crash victims, as saying.

Clifford noted that the company had experienced a “nosedive” under Boeing’s last CEOs, Dennis Muilenburg and Dave Calhoun, and the “do-nothing” board. But there is hope now that Ortberg is “not coming to Boeing” and has a “good reputation.”

In order for Ortberg to take over the position of Boeing CEO, the company’s supervisory board even waived the legally prescribed age limit of 65 for CEOs.

According to US media, Ortberg has already made a far-reaching decision that could have great psychological significance. He wants to be based in Seattle, Washington State, which industry experts interpret as reversing the ill-fated relocation of the company’s headquarters from Boeing’s development and production center first to Chicago and then to Virginia in 2001.

Not only would this be a huge boost to confidence among Boeing’s core workforce, it could even help avert an impending strike by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 in Seattle.

Seattle Newspaper Aviation reporter Dominic Gates told a local radio station that one of the engineers’ demands is that Boeing “commit to building the next plane here and stop threatening to take away their jobs.”

“I suspect he will give them what they ask for. And if he does that, we could avoid a strike,” he added, which would be a good start to the Ortberg era.

Edited by: Rob Mudge