Boeing was supposed to soar again in 2024.
Airplane deliveries were up, sales revenue was rising, and the storied aerospace company’s top executive declared it was “making progress in our recovery” after severe economic headwinds and investigations of two 737 Max air disasters five years earlier.
Just five days into the new year, though, Boeing’s progress toward better days blew away in an instant.
A door panel in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max broke off and flew into the sky 16,000 feet over Oregon, leaving the company struggling to explain how the plane had gone into service missing crucial bolts.
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No one was killed in the Jan. 5 episode, but it foreshadowed a horrible year for Boeing, one marked by federal investigations, whistleblower complaints, accusations of shoddy workmanship, safety reviews, congressional probes, executive shake-ups, a nearly two-month strike that shut down production, humiliations in spaceflight and crushing financial losses.
As a new year begins, Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, will push forward with his plan for a leaner company more focused on its core mission: building quality airplanes. As part of that, he’ll need to ramp up production, which resumed last month following the nearly two-month-long machinists’ strike and rebuild relations with employees. Now that planes are being assembled again, Ortberg also must persuade regulators to remove production caps.
“There is work underway across...
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