Boeing Co. has named aerospace industry veteran Robert “Kelly” Ortberg as its next president and CEO as the company seeks to recover from intense scrutiny following a series of high-profile accidents.
Ortberg will take over as CEO of the aerospace company on Aug. 8, following Dave Calhoun’s decision to step down as CEO. Announced Wednesday.
“Over the past several months, our board has conducted a thorough and extensive search process to select Boeing’s next CEO, and we believe Kelly has the right mix of talent and experience to lead Boeing in its next chapter,” Boeing board chairman Steven Mollenkopf said in a statement.
Mollenkopf called Ortberg an “experienced leader” and said the new CEO is a “deeply respected” figure in the aerospace industry with more than 35 years of leadership experience in the field.
“I am incredibly honored and humbled to join this iconic company,” Ortberg said, adding, “There’s a lot of work to do and I can’t wait to get started.”
A Boeing spokesman told The Associated Press that the company waived the mandatory retirement age of 65 for Ortberg. The company did the same for Calhoun, who turns 64 in 2021.
Boeing posted a loss of more than $1.4 billion in the second quarter due to declining revenue, a bigger-than-expected drop than a loss of $149 million in the same period last year, according to the Associated Press.
The financial loss comes after months of turmoil for Boeing, which has been under intense scrutiny since January when a fuselage panel of a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet blew off and created a gaping hole during an Alaska Airlines flight at 16,000 feet above Oregon.
The plane was forced to make an emergency landing and no serious injuries were reported, but the incident sparked a series of investigations into Boeing’s production and safety compliance practices.
Three months after the airstrike, Calhoun announced his resignation, saying he had been “considering for some time” the right time to transition the company’s CEO.
“As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 disaster marked a watershed moment for Boeing, and we must continue to respond to this incident with humility and full transparency,” Calhoun said. I wrote in a letter “We also need to instill a total commitment to safety and quality at every level within the company,” the company informed employees in March.
Amid ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and federal regulators, he was grilled last month by a bipartisan group of senators about the company’s safety and quality-control practices.
The testimony came just before new whistle-blower allegations were released, raising concerns about Boeing’s commitment to actually implement reforms it promised after the company’s planes exploded in mid-air and two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.
In his opening testimony last month, Calhoun apologized directly to the families of those killed in the Boeing crash.
The company also faces multiple lawsuits, including two separate lawsuits involving passenger groups and a third from shareholders alleging “serious safety defects.”
Boeing and the Justice Department agreed last week for the company to plead guilty to conspiracy and pay a fine of about $250 million.
The proposed agreement would conclude a years-long investigation into two deadly Boeing crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed about 350 people.
