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from the perhaps-it's-still-better-to-see-the-USA-in-your-Chevrolet dept.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to step down as part of management shakeup at embattled plane maker:
Boeing Co CEO Dave Calhoun will step down by year-end, in a broad management shakeup brought on by the plane maker's sprawling safety crisis stemming from a January mid-air panel blowout on a 737 Max plane.
The plane maker also said that Stan Deal, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO, would retire, and Stephanie Pope would lead that business. Steve Mollenkopf has been appointed the new chair of the board.
The leadership change caps weeks of turmoil at Boeing, after the mid-air incident involving an Alaska Airlines-operated Max 9 jet carrying 171 passengers turned into a full-blown safety and reputational crisis for the iconic plane maker.
The company is facing heavy regulatory scrutiny and U.S. authorities curbed production while it attempts to fix safety and quality issues. The company is in talks to buy its former subsidiary Spirit AeroSystems to try to get more control over its supply chain.
[...] Since Calhoun took the reins, the company has endured ongoing delays to production. Still, in October, Calhoun was upbeat over how fast Boeing could raise output of its Max jets, saying Boeing would get back to 38 jets a month and was "anxious to build from there as fast as we can."
But weeks after the mid-air cabin panel blowout in January, Calhoun said it's time to "go slow to go fast."
The company's crisis has frustrated airlines already struggling with delivery delays from both Boeing and its rival Airbus, and the plane maker has been burning more cash than expected in this quarter than expected.
"For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right, and that's got to change," West said last week.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday March 27, @09:50AM
So is he and his resigning officer buddies going to stand trial for the deaths due to MCAS? Or the previous officers if that lot isn't responsible?
It's too easy to leave when the shit hits the fan - with a nice bonus too, no doubt.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday March 27, @11:12AM (1 child)
Get out before the lock you up for criminal neglect!
And hope that golden parachute opens.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ox0000 on Wednesday March 27, @09:53PM
The previous CEO, Dennis Muilenburg [wikipedia.org] scored a USD 62,000,000 walk-away parachute:
from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dennis_Muilenburg&oldid=1213532822 [wikipedia.org], which is the current state of that wiki page as of writing this reply:
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 27, @09:55PM (3 children)
I saw something in passing about Emirates demanding the new CEO has an engineering background....
While I echo the sentiment, my real world experience is that often the engineers who ascend to "promote-able to CEO" status generally are better at things not-engineering related...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday March 27, @11:07PM (1 child)
If it's a professional engineer and s/he signs off on the designs, wouldn't s/he be personally liable for failures? I thought that was a thing. Even if it's not for bolts and stuff, at least it would be someone who knows what's at stake.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 28, @12:57AM
Actual licensed professional engineers do "put their license at risk" if they stamp a bad design.
I don't think aerospace has that kind of PE licensing, I know medical devices don't.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28, @04:12PM
How will that help? The previous one had some engineering background and was in charge when the 737 MAX was built.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday March 27, @11:04PM (1 child)
it's so funny they are talking about absorbing Spirit. They might call Spirit a "former subsidiary", but let's be real. Boeing puts sub-assemblies together and wrangles specification documents.
it will be a torturous, probably impossible climb back from MBA-retard hell to a real commercial aerospace engineering company again.
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Thursday March 28, @10:41PM
Boeing cannot even afford to buy Spirit.
There is a chance, though, that it might afford one or two of their sites - iff their competitors help them out [youtube.com].