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Leadership

Boeing Ousts CEO, Chairman, Airplane Division Chief in Fallout from Safety Catastrophe

March 25, 2024

Door plugs popping off in flight, critical reports from regulators on the company’s safety processes, wheels falling off of planes and other safety errors have prompted the largest U.S. plane maker to clean house.

Robert Schoenberger

Boeing is cleaning house in its executive ranks following months of safety errors that put hundreds of flyers at risk, ousting its CEO, chairman and the head of its commercial airplane division, though the CEO plans to stay with the company through the end of the year.

President and CEO Dave Calhoun will leave at the end of the year, Board Chair Larry Kellner will not seek re-election and Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Stan Deal is retiring and will immediately be replaced by Boeing Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Pope.

Pope has been serving as chief operating officer of Boeing since January of this year. Previously, she was president and chief executive officer of Boeing Global Services, where she was responsible for leading the company's aerospace services for commercial, government and aviation industry customers worldwide. Prior, she was chief financial officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, and has held positions in every Boeing business unit.

Boeing had already replaced the head of the 737 Max program, following the January 5 disaster in which a door plug on an Alaksa Airways blew out, in flight, creating a giant opening in the fuselage that thankfully no passengers fell through. This month, a wheel fell off of a United Airlines Boeing plane, destroying a car in an airport parking lot, and a Federal Aviation Administration report thoroughly criticized the plan maker’s safety and quality standards.

About the Author

Robert Schoenberger

Editor-in-Chief

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robert-schoenberger-4326b810

Bio: Robert Schoenberger has been writing about manufacturing technology in one form or another since the late 1990s. He began his career in newspapers in South Texas and has worked for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland where he spent more than six years as the automotive reporter. In 2014, he launched Today's Motor Vehicles (now EV Manufacturing & Design), a magazine focusing on design and manufacturing topics within the automotive and commercial truck worlds. He joined IndustryWeek in late 2021.