After financial losses and successive scandals, Boeing board appoints new CEO
The aerospace company, which appointed Robert Ortberg to replace Dave Calhoun, also reported significant financial losses of $1.44 billion in the second half of the year as a result of controversy over the safety and quality of its airplanes.
Boeing's new president, Robert Ortberg.
The Boeing board announced this Wednesday that Robert "Kelly" Ortberg had been named as the company's new chief executive officer.
The businessman will take up his new post as of August 8, the date on which the company's previous CEO, Dave Calhoun, will leave Boeing as promised a few months ago.
Ortberg is an interesting candidate to fill the senior management position at Boeing. The 64-year-old businessman has extensive experience in the aeronautics sector. In fact, he managed the Rockwell Collins group, which then became a subsidiary of RTX, until 2021, when he decided to retire.
However, Robert Ortberg is coming out of his retirement to try to bring Boeing back to being "a leader and pioneer in our industry," as he himself assured in a statement picked up by CNN:
"I’m extremely honored and humbled to join this iconic company. 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."
However, the businessman is aware of the challenge ahead and did not hesitate to state that "there is much work to be done." The aerospace company is facing an unprecedented controversy that began earlier this year when an emergency window exploded on a Boeing 737 Max-9 operated by Alaska Airlines.
This was only the beginning of the story. Following this incident, various aircrafts of the aerospace company began to have different malfunctions which, on more than one occasion, led to accidents that put passengers in danger or even caused the death of its passengers.
It was clear that Boeing's vehicles had serious problems with safety, quality control and production shortcomings.
Failures that were compounded when the former worker John Barnett, who had reported various vehicle problems, turned up dead just after testifying against Boeing.
All this caused the company to begin to suffer a crisis for which the now former CEO, Dave Calhoun, had to explain himself before the Senate.
Boeing reports net losses of $1.44 billion
The economic damage, however, was already done. Boeing began reporting losses that this Wednesday reached their peak when the aerospace company assured that it had a net loss of $1.44 billion during its second quarter.
This deficit, the company explained, was mainly due to having delivered fewer commercial aircrafts due to the crisis and that had led to lower revenues, which, during this second half, stood at $16.9 billion, 14.6% less than in the previous period.
Manufacturing fewer airplanes was not the only cause of Boeing's revenue drop. As AFP assured, the company's defense business, with fixed-price contracts posting losses due to difficulties in the supply chain, rising engineering costs and other technical problems also negatively impacted Boeing.
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