Nearly three months after the fuselage on a Boeing plane ripped open mid-flight, the CEO of the nation’s largest commercial-airline manufacturer is going down. On Monday, Boeing head Dave Calhoun announced in a letter to employees that he would resign at the end of the year.
Calhoun has served as Boeing CEO since 2019, when he was appointed to lead the company after two of its 737 MAX 8 aircraft crashed in a five-month period, killing close to 350 people. He will not be the only C-suite executive departing Boeing. In his letter, Calhoun also announced that chairman Larry Kellner will not stand for re-election at the company’s next shareholder meeting. Stan Deal, the head of Boeing’s division that manufactures commercial planes, will also step down, according to a company statement. Board member and former Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf will serve as the new chairman and will lead the search for the company’s next CEO.
In his letter, Calhoun wrote that the averted disaster of the Alaska Airlines flight on January 5 was a “watershed moment” for the company. Since then, problems with Boeing planes have remained in the headlines: Wheels and external panels have come off their planes mid-flight. Following an audit, the Federal Aviation Administration stated that there were several examples in which Boeing “allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements.” Boeing claims that it cannot find documents related to the faulty door plug that caused the fuselage to tear open on the Alaska Airlines flight. On March 9, a whistleblower who called attention to Boeing’s production quality in 2019 died by suicide one day after testifying against the company. The Justice Department last week informed passengers of the Alaska Airlines flight that they could be victims of a federal crime and that the flight is under investigation by the FBI.
Boeing has taken a significant financial hit during this crisis of its own making. Last week, its CFO announced the company would spend up to $4.5 billion this quarter to address its safety and supply-chain problems. Stock value has tanked since the door fell off and FAA’s limit on Boeing 737 MAX production will hurt its margins for some time to come. But with such a long timeline for Calhoun’s emergency exit, the financial package he lands with will surely help damper his personal bad news.
