Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to leave, in news that will be welcome to many Washingtonians

Avi­a­tion giant Boe­ing announced today that CEO Dave Cal­houn will depart the com­pa­ny at the end of this year, while Com­mer­cial Air­planes CEO Stan Deal will retire effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly and Board Chair Lar­ry Kell­ner won’t run for re-elec­tion at the com­pa­ny’s upcom­ing annu­al share­hold­er meeting.

The “board and man­age­ment changes”, as Boe­ing put them, fol­low a rough few weeks at the plane­mak­er. The com­pa­ny is under new­found scruti­ny after a door plug blew off dur­ing an Alas­ka Air­lines flight in ear­ly Jan­u­ary, and the evi­dence sug­gests the grave­ly con­cern­ing episode was Boe­ing’s fault. The com­pa­ny is now report­ed­ly the tar­get of a fed­er­al crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion.

Cal­houn, six­ty-six, suc­ceed­ed Den­nis Muilen­burg in 2019 after the board lost con­fi­dence in his abil­i­ty to lead the com­pa­ny. Muilen­burg had been in charge dur­ing the fatal crash­es of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopi­an Air Flight 302, both 737 MAX hull loss­es, which Boe­ing ini­tial­ly tried to dodge account­abil­i­ty for. Sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tions unearthed the now well-known issues with the 737 MAX’s MCAS (Maneu­ver­ing Char­ac­ter­is­tics Aug­men­ta­tion Sys­tem), lead­ing to a world­wide ground­ing of the MAX and huge trou­ble for Boeing.

The board then put Cal­houn (one of their own) in charge after dump­ing Muilen­burg. They could have gone back to basics and found an engi­neer­ing mind with roots in Seat­tle to lead the com­pa­ny. They chose not to. 

Cal­houn has been unable to pull Boe­ing out of its down­ward spi­ral, as recent events have shown. His tenure has been a one step for­ward, two steps back sto­ry of bad man­age­ment and inef­fec­tive leadership.

Last month, in our most recent statewide poll, we asked a sam­ple of 700 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers what should hap­pen to Cal­houn: Should he be kept on the job, or replaced with a new leader? A major­i­ty were unsure, but among those who had an opin­ion, sen­ti­ment over­whelm­ing­ly favored Cal­houn’s ouster. Just 12% thought he should be kept on, with 34% pre­fer­ring his exit.

And today, that exit was set in motion.

Here’s the exact ques­tion we asked and the answers we received:

QUESTION: Do you think Boe­ing should keep its cur­rent chief exec­u­tive offi­cer Dave Cal­houn on the job, or do you think that the com­pa­ny should replace him with a new leader?

ANSWERS:

• Think Boe­ing should keep its cur­rent chief exec­u­tive offi­cer Dave Cal­houn on the job: 12%
• Think that the com­pa­ny should replace him with a new leader: 34%
• Not sure: 54%

Our sur­vey of 789 like­ly 2024 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th through Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 14th, 2024.

The poll uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (42%) and online answers from respon­dents recruit­ed by text (58%).

It was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling (PPP) for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.5% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

The Boe­ing board has cho­sen Steve Mol­lenkopf, Qual­com­m’s for­mer CEO and an elec­tri­cal engi­neer by train­ing, as its next inde­pen­dent board chair. 

Mol­lenkopf will be head­ing up the search for a new chief exec­u­tive offi­cer to replace Cal­houn. Stan Deal, mean­while, will be suc­ceed­ed by Stephanie Pope, the chief finan­cial offi­cer of Boe­ing Com­mer­cial Airplanes.

“I am hon­ored and hum­bled to step into this new role,” said Mol­lenkopf in a Boe­ing press release. “I am ful­ly con­fi­dent in this com­pa­ny and its lead­er­ship – and togeth­er we are com­mit­ted to tak­ing the right actions to strength­en safe­ty and qual­i­ty, and to meet the needs of our cus­tomers. I also want to thank both Lar­ry and Dave for their excep­tion­al stew­ard­ship of Boe­ing dur­ing a chal­leng­ing and con­se­quen­tial time for Boe­ing and the aero­space industry.”

Our team does not share any of those sen­ti­ments, but we hope Mol­lenkopf can find a CEO who will get Boe­ing back on the right track. 

The com­pa­ny needs to trans­form its cul­ture to put safe­ty and stew­ard­ship above prof­its and greed. It needs to do right by its cus­tomers, such as the Pacif­ic North­west­’s home­town car­ri­er, Alas­ka Air­lines. It needs to do right by its work­ers, includ­ing the Machin­ists, who are prepar­ing for con­tract nego­ti­a­tions with Boe­ing. And it should move its head­quar­ters back to the Seat­tle area so it can be close to its pri­ma­ry man­u­fac­tur­ing center. 

“I have been con­sid­er­ing for some time, in dis­cus­sion with our board of direc­tors, the right time for a CEO tran­si­tion at Boe­ing,” said Cal­houn in a let­ter to Boe­ing employ­ees. “I want to share with you that I have decid­ed this will be my last year as CEO of our great com­pa­ny, and I have noti­fied the board of that decision.”

“I orig­i­nal­ly agreed to take on the role of CEO of Boe­ing at the board’s request, step­ping down as board chair in the process, because of the unprece­dent­ed cir­cum­stances the com­pa­ny was fac­ing at that time,” Cal­houn’s let­ter went on to say. “It has been the great­est priv­i­lege of my life to serve in both roles and I will only feel the jour­ney has been prop­er­ly com­plet­ed when we fin­ish the job that we need to do. We are going to fix what isn’t work­ing, and we are going to get our com­pa­ny back on the track towards recov­ery and stability.”

It seems unlike­ly to us that Boe­ing will emerge from the clouds it’s cur­rent­ly under by the end of this year. Boe­ing is in a pret­ty deep hole, and seri­ous struc­tur­al change is need­ed get the com­pa­ny on a sound footing. 

Cal­houn speaks of fix­ing what isn’t work­ing, but he has had years to do that, and the prob­lems have just kept on com­ing. That’s why we sus­pect most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who voiced an opin­ion about his future in our sur­vey favored his exit.