Boeing CEOs stressed finances before design and engineering earlier. That is called greed. Deaths of passengers and crisis of the company followed. Now CEO is back at it.
“Boeing Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the company has started work on a new airplane design, but it is focused on playing catch-up to deliver products that are years behind schedule.
Ortberg said airlines weren't clamoring for a new design just yet, and Boeing wants to have the technology and its finances in place first. "Certainly, getting our financial house in order is a part of our being ready," Ortberg said. "That's going to take another couple years."
The CEO said the company is spending "time and money" preparing to introduce a new design at the right time, however.
"We don't have a firm configuration right now," he said during an interview on Sunday ahead of the Farnborough International Airshow outside London. "We're evaluating trade studies. You create a baseline and you evaluate things against the baseline, and then you change."
At the air show, makers of everything from passenger planes to military drones show off their hardware to woo prospective customers. Manufacturers typically feature the orders they are getting, and Boeing is expected to announce some. Yet Ortberg said Boeing was focused on delivering models, like the company's long-awaited 777X wide-body.
"Orders are not our challenge," Ortberg said. "Our challenge is getting these orders delivered."
Nearly two years into his tenure as CEO, Ortberg has been working to steady the prominent American manufacturer after a series of safety and quality crises. Ortberg's job has been more akin to head mechanic than chief salesman as he works to fix frayed relationships with regulators, customers and even the White House.
Ortberg made a point of moving to the Seattle area where most Boeing planes are still made, though the CEO said he has spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., near the company's official headquarters. The CEO has also joined Trump administration officials on U.S. trade missions and said the president has been good for the U.S. aerospace industry.
"He's been very helpful on the global campaigns where nations have a trade imbalance with the U.S.," Ortberg said. "There's no question that if they want to address that trade imbalance, that buying aircraft is a pretty big purchase."
In his talk with reporters Sunday, Ortberg also described Boeing needing to make more progress from the production floor to its balance sheet. Instead of doing demonstration flights of the much-delayed 777X at the air show, Ortberg said he chose to keep the aircraft in the U.S. while it awaits safety certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA is close to giving Boeing's 737 MAX 7 model final approval as soon as late July, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Ortberg said Sunday that he considers the MAX 7's certification "clock-ticking soon" and expects the larger MAX 10 to clinch approval "not very long after that." The MAX 10 recently had two flight tests left before final paperwork can be done, he said.
Ortberg said Boeing is still working on improvements. The company wants work instructions easier for production-line employees to follow when they are building aircraft, for instance.
Mechanics at the new 737 line in Everett, Wash., must first train at similar lines further south to gain experience with the aircraft type.
"Traveled work," an industry term for flaws made on a manufacturing line that must be fixed further along in the process, is another challenge.
"We put a much more disciplined approach in eliminating or reducing traveled work, not moving the airplane if it adds any kind of a safety or quality risk," Ortberg said.
Boeing is adding more workers and shifts at the plant manufacturing the next-generation Air Force Ones. The Air Force has said the first of two new presidential jets will be delivered in 2028.
Ortberg, a former chief of supplier Collins Aerospace until its takeover by RTX, said he is taking more time to hear workers' feedback in person before problems come to a boil. Dissatisfaction with the company's contract offers for union employees in 2024 partly drove the strike that ended up halting Seattle-area 737 jet production for nearly two months.
"There's no question that in that strike in the Puget Sound, we were distant from our employees," Ortberg said. "We thought we knew what they wanted, and it turned out we didn't. We've done a lot to learn from that."” [1]
1. Boeing CEO Stresses Finances Before Design. FitzGerald, Drew. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 July 2026: B1.
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