Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is stepping down at the end of 2024 as the aerospace giant grapples with fallout stemming from the 737 Max crisis.
Calhoun, who was tapped to turn around the company in 2020, will “lead Boeing through the year to complete the critical work underway to stabilize and position the company for the future,” the company said in a statement Monday.
Aside from Calhoun’s departure, Boeing announced an overhaul of its management team as it tries to turn around its reputation.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) chief Stan Deal will also step down, effective immediately. Deal is being replaced by Stephanie Pope, who has been serving as the chief operating officer. Pope was in charge of overseeing the performance of Boeing’s three business units – Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Boeing Defense, Space & Security and Boeing Global Services.
Independent Board Chair Larry Kellner also announced plans to resign. He will be replaced by Steve Mollenkopf, who has been a Boeing director since 2020 and will be in charge of leading the process of selecting Boeing’s next chief executive.
Boeing already replaced the head of its 737 Max program at the company’s Renton, Washington, facility, Ed Clark, earlier this year. Elizabeth Lund, senior vice president and general manager of Airplane Programs, was also appointed to a newly created role that will focus on quality control initiatives.
In a Monday letter to employees, Calhoun said the Jan. 5 incident where a door plug blew off Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet “was a watershed moment for Boeing.” The door panel appeared to be missing four key bolts, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that was released in February.
“We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company,” Calhoun said.
Calhoun said that all eyes are on the company but that it “will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years.”
Boeing initially brought on Calhoun to navigate a “challenging time” for the company as it sought to gain back public trust after a pair of deadly crashes involving its 737 Max 8 planes occurred in 2018 and 2019. Calhoun previously held leadership positions at Blackstone Group, Nielsen Holdings and GE and served on Boeing’s board since 2009.
The management change-up comes as regulators continue to press Boeing to make “pofound improvements” after quality issues were discovered in an audit of 737 Max manufacturing processes.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, who took a recent trip to Boeing manufacturing facilities, said in an interview with “NBC Nightly News” that Boeing’s “priorities have been on production and not on safety and quality.”
He gave the airplane manufacturer a 90-day deadline to develop a comprehensive action plan that would address “systemic quality-control issues” in February after a production audit of the Boeing 737 manufacturing processes and its supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, found multiple cases in which the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.
