Dave Calhoun’s Boeing turnaround efforts leave much for his successor to do

When Dave Calhoun took over as Boeing’s chief executive in January 2020, the company was in crisis. Four years later, with his expected successor starting her role as chief operating officer on January 1, the plane maker is in better shape but the fallout from that crisis — and the pandemic that followed — still lingers.

Calhoun took the top job 14 months after the first of two plane crashes that killed a combined 346 people and nine months after regulators worldwide grounded Boeing’s pivotal product, the 737 Max.

Three months later Boeing’s airline industry customers were rocked by Covid-19 and the collapse in demand for travel.

The former GE executive has overseen the Max’s return to service, which US aviation regulators approved in November 2020. Yet Boeing is still working to deliver jets that it built and stored while the Max was grounded, as well as fixing separate flaws in the 737s made by Spirit AeroSystems, a leading supplier.

Its stock price, at around $261, is 21 per cent lower than on the day Calhoun took over. Even as airlines clamour for more planes to meet resurgent travel demand, its executives have said the company would not return to “stability” until 2025 or 2026.

Analysts believe that some of the items on Boeing’s to-do list, such as continuing to reduce its debt load and transitioning away from the 737 to a new single-aisle aeroplane, are now likely to fall to Calhoun’s successor.

Boeing created the chief operating officer position in December and named Stephanie Pope, head of its services business, to fill the role from January 1. She will oversee the company’s three business units and report directly to Calhoun, setting her up as Boeing’s potential next chief executive. Pope would be the first woman to hold the position.

When Calhoun, a former Boeing director, replaced Dennis Muilenburg as chief executive, “the most important job was to get the Max back in the air, which was eventually achieved”, said aerospace…