DAVID RYDER/Reuters
- After years of struggling, 2024 was supposed to be the year Boeing turned it all around.
- A near-disaster on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 jet over Portland threatens to disrupt everything.
- CEO Dave Calhoun really has his work cut out for him now.
Four years after being tasked with turning the ship around at Boeing, CEO Dave Calhoun has been presented with a new set of challenges.
Not even a week into 2024 — which Calhoun had previously heralded as the company's turnaround year, according to Bloomberg — a major incident on a nearly brand-new Boeing airliner has resulted in more trouble for one of its most important products.
On January 5, a plug door flew off a two-month-old Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 while climbing out of Portland International Airport. Nobody was seriously hurt except, possibly, Boeing's already-suffering reputation for creating quality products.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the incident, but the FAA's grounding of all 171 Max 9 planes has already created operational havoc for the airlines that rely on the airliner, like Alaska and United.
Calhoun has called an all-hands meeting for Tuesday to discuss the incident — and to talk about "safety, quality, integrity, and transparency."
"While we've made progress and strengthened our safety management and quality control systems and processes in the last few years, situations like this are a reminder that we must remain focused on continuing to improve every day," Calhoun wrote in a note announcing the meeting.
Associated Press
Calhoun also canceled the company's senior leadership retreat outside San Diego set to begin this week.
Calhoun took the reins at Boeing in 2020 in the wake of the company's previous Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that left a total of 346 people dead. They led to the longest grounding of an airliner in US history and ballooned into a genuine scandal after federal investigators said the company deceived the FAA during the certification process for the Max planes.
Since then, the company has undergone even more struggles after the COVID-19 pandemic upended the aviation industry. Boeing has dealt with issues and delays in its manufacturing and delivery of planes to customers, suppliers, and more that have stretched to the current day.
After the Alaska incident, Boeing said in a statement: "Safety is our top priority, and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers. We agree with and fully support the FAA's decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane."
Though 2024 was supposed to be the year to turn it all around, it's already not looking great. The Max 9 incident could affect the potentially frayed trust Boeing customers and the flying public have in the company's products.
Boeing is attempting to ramp up production of the Max to clear out its now enormous backlog, get the Max 7 certified by the FAA, and resume Max deliveries to Chinese airlines.
The newest incident could derail any or all of these plans, though the most likely result is a delay to the Max 7's certification process, Deutsche Bank analysts speculate in a note to investors Monday.
Maybe 2025 will be better for Boeing.