Topline
Longtime aerospace executive Robert “Kelly” Ortberg has been selected to replace Dave Calhoun as CEO of Boeing, the company announced Wednesday, after a tumultuous few years that have included intense scrutiny of the safety of its737 Max jets and saw the company plead guilty to defrauding the Federal Aviation Administration.
A Boeing 737 MAX 7 aircraft.
Key Facts
Ortberg will replace Dave Calhoun starting Aug. 8 and will also serve on Boeing’s Board of Directors.
Calhoun first took on the role of Boeing CEO in January 2020—and the company extended its mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70 to allow him to remain as CEO in April 2021—before announcing his retirement earlier this year.
In the statement announcing his hiring, Ortberg said there was “much work to be done” at Boeing and he is “looking forward to getting started.”
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Who Is Kelly Ortberg?
Ortberg, 64, started his career at Texas Instruments before joining Rockwell Collins, an aviation tech company, in 1987. He joined Rockwell as a program manager and worked his way up to become its CEO in 2013. Rockwell was named one of the best large employers in the country by Forbes under Ortberg’s leadership. He oversaw the acquisition of Rockwell by United Technologies Corporation in 2018 and retired in 2021. Ortberg currently serves on the Board of Directors of Aptiv PLC, an automotive technology supplier.
Key Background
Concerns have been raised about the safety of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes since a pair of the jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing all 346 people on board. All 737 Max airliners were grounded from March 2019 to December of 2020 as Boeing addressed a faulty flight control system. In 2021, Boeing paid a $243 million criminal fine associated with the crashes but was not charged criminally because it agreed to create and implement a program that would find and prevent any violations of federal fraud law. Earlier this year, however, it was revealed the company had not met the anti-fraud requirements and the Justice Department announced plans to charge Boeing with fraud. The company agreed to plead guilty and will pay an additional $243.6 million in fines, significantly less than the $24.8 billion the families of crash victims were seeking in damages. Meanwhile, Boeing faced blowback earlier this year following a mid-flight incident on an Alaska Airlines: A panel blew off of an Alaska Airlines plane while in air on Jan. 5, and it was later found to be missing four bolts. More than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s were grounded in January, and the incident kicked off a series of investigations into Boeing that have unearthed manufacturing and quality flaws at the company and its partner Spirit AeroSystems.
Surprising Fact
In 2022, Netflix released a documentary called “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” that claimed the company had a culture of profit over safety, which contributed to the crashes in 2018 and 2019.
Further Reading
Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes reporter who covers breaking news with a frequent focus on the entertainment industry, streaming, sports news, publishing, pop culture and climate change. She joined Forbes in 2023 and lives in Dallas. She’s covered Netflix’s hottest documentaries, a surge of assaults reported on social media, the most popular books of the year and how climate change stands to impact the way we eat. Roeloffs was included on Editor & Publisher Magazine’s “ 25 Under 30” list in 2023 and worked covering local news in the greater Boston area from 2017 to 2023. She graduated with a double major in political science and journalism from Northeastern University. Follow Roeloffs for continued coverage of streaming wars, pop culture news and trending topics.
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