Kelly Ortberg starts as new Boeing CEO, will work out of company’s Seattle office
Aug 8, 2024, 10:25 AM
Kelly Ortberg begins his new job as CEO at Boeing. (Boeing)
(Boeing)
Boeing has a new CEO and he is hitting the ground running.
“I can’t tell you how proud and excited I am to be a member of the Boeing team,” Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg said Thursday in a letter to employees. “While we clearly have a lot of work to do in restoring trust, I’m confident that working together, we will return the company to be the industry leader we all expect.”
He’s got a big job ahead of him.
“Restoring trust starts with meeting our commitments — whether that’s building high quality, safe commercial aircraft, delivering on defense and space products that allow our customers to meet their mission, or servicing our products to keep our customers running 24/7,” he wrote in the letter.
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Ortberg is beginning his new adventure with a couple of things going for him. He has a background in mechanical engineering, far different than his predecessors who focused on finance. He is also bringing the job back to Seattle, a sign some believe shows he’s serious about upgrading the product.
Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory praised Ortberg’s choice of office location.
“It’s incredibly promising,” he told CNN. “It shows that he’s not afraid to go where the problems are and to put in some serious hard work solving them.”
Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, was the former CEO of supplier Rockwell Collins. He replaces retiring Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, who has been under fire for the company’s problems.
Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, praised Ortberg’s choice of office location.
Boeing has been hit with serious quality issues in recent years, problems that resulted in two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 leading to a 20-month grounding of the jet. Then, in January 2024, a door plug blew off the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max flight in January.
Additionally, the aerospace company is even having a tough time getting astronauts back from the International Space Station because its Starliner capsule is having issues.
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Despite all this, he wrote, “Thanks for your support and I’m excited to dig in!”
Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.
