After meeting Kelly Ortberg, United CEO Scott Kirby has turned from a harsh Boeing critic to a firm believer in the manufacturer’s recovery.
Few airline bosses have blasted Boeing with as much criticism as the CEO of United Airlines. Even Alaska itself, the airline that suffered the 737 MAX-9 blowout, hasn’t been as vocal as Scott Kirby. And it was the reaction of airline CEOs like these that pushed Boeing to oust its previous CEO.
This factor also likely shaped Boeing’s board’s decision to pick an outsider like Kelly Ortberg to lead the company. But until now, we haven’t heard from the airlines directly to see what they made of Ortberg.
The United boss met the new Boeing CEO this week over lunch and became a fan. “I was not only encouraged by what I heard, but I also came away with a renewed confidence that Boeing is on the right path,” Kirby wrote.
The MAX-9 blowout triggered the United CEO to lambast Boeing the way he did because the event affected the airline in two ways. Firstly, the immediate grounding of the MAX-9 affected United badly because they have a large fleet of these jets.
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Secondly, it soon became clear that the situation would delay the development of the remaining 737 MAX variants: the MAX-7 and the MAX-10. United had no orders for the former, but at the time, the airline had 277 orders and 200 options on the 737 MAX-10!
Late in January, Kirby said in an interview that “…the MAX-9 grounding is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back for us…”. A few days earlier, he flew to Paris to talk with Airbus about more A321neo orders to replace the MAX-10. Calhoun’s departure was announced about two months later after similar criticisms from more airline CEOs.
After their meeting, the United CEO highlighted Kelly Ortberg’s engineering background, saying that Boeing needs it. He also commended Ortberg’s decision to base himself in Seattle “…to be close to his frontline teams,” as Kirby put it.
In the past few days, Ortberg has also drawn praise from Adam Mulally, a former Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO who was passed over for the Boeing Group CEO position about two decades ago. Mulally went on to save Ford Motor Company from bankruptcy.
Mulally complimented the new Boeing CEO as an engineer and a manager at Rockwell Collins, adding that Ortberg, as a young Rockwell engineer, took part in the design of key avionics for the 777. Ortberg has previously identified Mulally as one of his role models.
