It took less than three months after the very serious accident of the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9, which lost a door in mid-flight on January 5, for the boss of Boeing to step down. Dave Calhoun, the CEO of the American aircraft manufacturer, announced, on the morning of Monday March 25, his departure from the company at the end of 2024.
This announcement is accompanied by a major reshuffle of the management team. Stan Deal, head of the commercial aviation branch, immediately left the company and was replaced by Stephanie Pope, who was named head of operations earlier this year and was in the running to one day succeed Mr. Calhoun.
“As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing”Mr. Calhoun said in a letter sent to employees Monday. “We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We must also demonstrate a total commitment to safety and quality at all levels of our business. »
Disastrous quality process
The chairman of the board of directors, Larry Kellner, will not see his mandate renewed at the next general meeting. The board chose Steve Mollenkopf, former boss of Qualcomm, to take over. It will be up to him to find a successor to Dave Calhoun.
Boeing hoped to recover in 2024, after the two 737 MAX 8 accidents that occurred in October 2018 (Lion Air in Indonesia, 189 deaths) and March 2019 (Ethiopian Airlines, 157 deaths) due to a faulty in-flight stabilization system.
Dave Calhoun, formerly of General Electric, was also appointed after these disasters, at the beginning of 2020, to turn around the company and restore, in Washington, the image of a group very dependent on public military orders. The accident in January 2024 sent it back to its lowest point. Boeing is the subject of a dual civil investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the FBI, which wrote to Alaska Airlines passengers that they may have been victims of a criminal offense.
The first results of the investigations are damning for the American aircraft manufacturer. It turned out that the plane’s cap holder, delivered in September 2023 by a former subsidiary, Spirit AeroSystems, had been removed by Boeing technicians, who wanted to repair rivets, and which they had forgotten to put back the bolts used to secure it. Overall, Boeing’s quality process is catastrophic. Out of eighty-nine audits conducted by the FAA to test its industrial procedures, the company failed thirty-three times.
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