Boeing’s decision to hire a trained accountant as its CEO – while rival Airbus’s boss is an engineer – has come under fresh scrutiny after yet another safety drama.
David Calhoun took the reins in 2020 following two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes that left 346 people dead. And last week’s incident – when a door plug blew off another 737 Max while flying at 16,000 feet – has hindered the $22 million a year boss’ attempts to turn the company around.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Authority announced plans to audit Boeing over fears of other quality control problems along its supply chains.
There have been no such dramas at Boeing’s European rival Airbus, whose CEO Guillaume Faury is an exceptionally-experienced airspace engineer. Critics of Boeing say the differences in the two CEOs’ job history is emblematic of Boeing’s alleged decision to put its profits ahead of engineering excellence.
This week, Calhoun admitted the Alaska Airlines incident was Boeing’s ‘mistake’ and said they had suffered a ‘quality escape’ in safety checks.
But the incident had already set Boeing stock price plummeting and grounded hundreds of planes.
David Calhoun with his wife Barbara at a pre-Grammy party in 2014
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, pictured, is a trained engineer with extensive aircraft experience. Critics of Boeing say the decision to hire a trained accountant as CEO is emblematic of the firm’s alleged decision to put profits over engineering excellence
A blow-out on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max earlier this month is the latest drama to hit Boeing’s troubled jet
In November 2018, a Boeing 737 Max crashed off Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board, with a Boeing-designed computer system later revealed to be at fault
In March 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAx smashed shortly after take-off, killing all 157 aboard. Boeing’s controversial MCAS computer system was also blamed for the horror
Experts point to the relatively-unblemished recent record of Boeing’s rival airbus as evidence of how bad things have gotten at Boeing.
Mr Calhoun is an accounting graduate on $22million per year, while Airbus has an aeronautical engineer as its boss.
Boeing – long one of America’s most prestigious companies – came under fire over two fatal crashes in 2017 and 2018 involving its new 737 Max variant, which was introduced to service in May 2017.
It is Boeing’s best-selling plane ever, with almost 4,800 ordered and over 1,400 completed – but has become a byword for corporate incompetence and death.
The Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines smashes – which killed more than 300 – were blamed on the jet’s flight stabilizing computer system. It is called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) and pitches the plane’s nose down without the pilots asking it to do so.
An Alaska Boeing 737 Max is pictured with the part of the fuselage that blew out circled in red. The 737 Max has far larger engines than its predecessors, with the jet dubbed an unwieldy ‘pig in lipstick’ by some critics
The first Boeing 737 pictured during its inaugural flight in 1967. Its engines were much smaller than the 737 Max – with that substantial increase in engine size ultimately to blame for two deadly crashes that killed more than 300
The 737 Max’s rival is the Airbus A320, pictured. It is a much newer design, which debuted in 1987, and whose higher wings have allowed Airbus to fit larger engines to its extended range Neo variant without issue
MCAS was used by Boeing to try and address the issue of the large engines bolted to the bottom of the 737 Max, which caused the plane’s nose to pitch into the air.
Earlier variants of the 737, which had its maiden flight in 1967, had much smaller engines designed to fit under the plane’s wings.
Boeing has been accused of rushing into updating the 737 to compete with Airbus’ similar-sized rival, the A320, rather than investing in a ‘clean-sheet’ design.
The Airbus is much newer – debuting in 1987 – and has higher wings, which made it relatively simple to fit larger engines to its extended range Neo variant.
But Boeing ran into difficulty when it fitted its larger engines to the lower wings of the 737 Max so the jet could fly further – and developed MCAS to try and counter the issue of their size.
Astonishingly, MCAS was kept secret from pilots by Boeing when it was rolled out.
The two crashes happened when pilots attempted to battle against MCAS when it began pitching their plane’s nose down, not realizing they were in a tug-of-war with a computer system.
After the second bloodbath, all Boeing 737 Maxes were grounded between March 2019 and November 2020. All appeared well when they were reintroduced to service, but last week’s Alaska Airlines incident has heaped fresh scandal on the plane and its maker.
Discontent with the current Boeing leadership grew in 2022, when executives came under fire from customers and investors.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary, slammed Boeing on a company’s earnings call at the time, saying executives were ‘running around like headless chickens’.
He added at the time: ‘Either the existing management needs to up its game or they need to change the existing management.’
This week, in wake of the recent incident, O’Leary told the Financial Times that Boeing needs to ‘significantly improve quality control’.
Calhoun owns a $2.75 million three bedroom apartment in the former Playboy building in Chicago
He splits his time between a waterfront property in Lake Sunapee, named ‘Camp David’
The ‘Camp David’ sign on the entry post is visible on Google Maps
Back in 2022, Steven Udvar-Hazy, chairman of aircraft lessor Air Lease Corp. seemed to suggest that the board of directors was set for an overhaul.
And Domhnal Slattery, CEO of Avolon Holdings Ltd. said Boeing had ‘lost its way’ and required ‘fresh vision, maybe fresh leadership.’
In recent years, Calhoun has drawn criticism for his lavish lifestyle and salary.
In 2022, Boeing paid out over $22 million to the executive in a mix of salary and long term incentives. In 2021, he received $21 million.
In March last year he missed out on a $7 million bonus for failing to get the new 777X jetliner in service by the end of the year.
But it didn’t hurt too much as a month before he received a grant of 25,000 restricted stock units – equivalent to $5.3 million – as a mark of confidence in his leadership.
The 65-year-old lives between his a $10.5 million sprawling waterside home named ‘Camp David’ in Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, a house in a gated South Carolina resort community and also counts a $2.75 million Chicago apartment.
He bought the 3,259-square-foot Chicago apartment in the former Playboy building in 2020, just months after taking over as CEO.
He bought the three-floor 6,740-square-foot Lake Sunapee house for just $1.85 million in 2006, according to town assessing records.
The ongoing scandals don’t seem to have given CEO David Calhoun a fear of flying as the executive reportedly uses Boeing’s private jets to hop between his two homes and the company’s offices.
In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing’s private planes had made over 400 trips to airports near Calhoun’s homes since he took over the top job in 2020.
According to flight records seen by the Journal, Calhoun seems to travel directly from his New Hampshire or South Carolina homes to the Arlington headquarters an average of once or twice a month.
The recent Alaska Airlines controversy has led critics to compare Calhoun to the CEO at Boeing’s main rival, Airbus, Guillaume Faury.
The Journal reported that unlike Calhoun, who mainly works from home and only appears in the office twice a month, Faury regularly works from Airbus’s European headquarters.
The missing part of the plane – a door plug – was found in a garden in Portland, Oregon
Boeing was plunged into chaos once more on Friday night after a part of a Boeing 737 Max plane – operated by Alaska Airlines – blew off at 16,000 feet.
Passengers were left fearing for their lives as the cabin depressurized, air masks dropped and belongings were sucked out of the plane through the gaping hole.
Boeing shares had the biggest plunge in over a year on Monday, losing a whopping $13.5 billion off its value in the first day of trading after the mid-air Alaska Airlines blowout.
The near disaster saw Boeing Corp shares plummet 8.6 percent – from 248 to 228 – between Friday evening and Monday morning. The stock continued to plunge after the market opened, reaching 226 – and analysts warned it is expected to continue falling until the aircrafts are back in service.
In the days after the disaster, firsthand accounts of passengers’ terrifying experiences emerged. One passenger texted her family ‘I don’t want to die’ after the window on the jet blew out.
Emma Vu took to TikTok after surviving the horror Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday evening, which was bound from Portland to California before a cabin window blasted into the sky at 16,000 feet.
‘In the moment I was so scared,’ Vu said, as she showed her panic-stricken texts to her family reading: ‘The masks r down; I am so scared right now; Please pray for me; Please I don’t want to die.’
Passenger Emma Vu said she ‘felt the entire plane drop’ around 20 minutes into the horror Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday evening, which was bound from Portland to California before a cabin window blasted into the sky at 16,000 feet
A teenager identified as Jack was left topless after his shirt was sucked off when a door plug on Alaska flight 1282 blew off
The window’s catastrophic failure depressurized the cabin, with the force of the air rushing in ripping the shirt off a young boy, whose mom was seen holding onto him. Passengers also watched as their phones were sucked out into the night sky.
Terrifying footage showed fliers looking out through the gaping hole of the fuselage onto the twinkling lights of Portland below in the eerily quiet cabin.
Miraculously, no injuries were reported on the plane, which had only gone into service in November 2023. Boeing, Alaska Airlines and the National Transportation Safety Board have all launched investigations.
The disaster is reminiscent of the 2018 and 2019 Max crashes that left a total of 346 people dead and led to the longest grounding of an airliner in US history.
After those crashes Calhoun provoked outrage by insinuating in an interview with the New York Times that part of the reason the planes crashed was because the pilots were from Ethiopia and Indonesia where he said ‘pilots don’t have anywhere near the experience that they have here in the US’.
When the Times asked if he thought American pilots would have been able to avoid the crash, he asked to speak off the record and then said: ‘You can guess the answer.’
The most recent incident sent shockwaves through the aviation industry and sparked urgent safety concerns, with Alaska Airlines grounding dozens of its Boeing 737-9 MAX jets for urgent safety checks following the emergency landing.
Reports indicate several other airlines and regulators are urgently looking into grounding their Boeing 737-9 MAX fleets, with critics pointing to several deadly crashes and systems failures involving the jets in recent years.
A photo shows the blown out area. It is offered as a door on the aircraft. Alaska chose not to take this option – although the frame of the prospective door was entirely ripped out by the fuselage failure
United Airlines carried out a full inspection of its 737 Max aircrafts and discovered loose bolts on several aircraft.
They reportedly found loose bolts and other parts on plug doors on at least five of its planes, according to The Air Current.
Chicago-based United has 79 of the grounded 737 Max 9 planes.
The airline told DailyMail.com on Monday: ‘Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug – for example, bolts that needed additional tightening.
‘These findings will be remedied by our Tech Ops team to safely return the aircraft to service.’
On Thursday, the FAA announced they were investigating Boeing over the incident.
Boeing said: ‘We will cooperate fully and transparently with the FAA and the NTSB on their investigations.’
Calhoun said: ‘We’re going to have to demonstrate it by our actions, by our willingness to work directly and transparently with them (customers). And to make sure they understand that every airplane that Boeing has its name on that’s in the sky is in fact safe.’