Boeing announced Monday that CEO Dave Calhoun plans to step down at the end of 2024 as part of a management shakeup amid investigations into the aerospace giant’s safety procedures.
The embattled company added that Stan Deal, the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is retiring from the company and its board chair, Larry Kellner, will not stand for reelection.
Stephanie Pope, who became Boeing’s chief operating officer in January, will lead Boeing Commercial Airlines, effective immediately. Kellner has been replaced by former Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, who has served on Boeing’s board of directors since 2020.
Calhoun has served as the planemaker’s CEO since January 2020. In a letter to employees released by the company, he said working for Boeing “has been the greatest privilege of my life.”
His exit comes as Boeing faces scrutiny of its safety practices and production after a door plug blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner shortly after it took off from an airport in January, leaving the plane with a gaping hole in its fuselage midair. In a preliminary report issued earlier this month, the National Transportation Safety Board found that four bolts appeared to have been removed from the plane at Boeing’s factory in Washington and never replaced.
“The eyes of the world are on us, and I know that we will come through this moment a better company,” Calhoun said in his letter to employees.
“We will remain squarely focused on completing the work we have done together to return our company to stability after the extraordinary challenges of the past five years, with safety and quality at the forefront of everything that we do.”
Calhoun has spent the last several months working to convince investigators, regulators and airlines that Boeing can still build a quality airline amid reports of misdrilled holes on 737 fuselages and other quality issues, The Wall Street Journal reported. He had been chosen to head the company after a pair of deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 sparked a safety crisis, the newspaper reported.
It was not immediately clear who might replace Calhoun.
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