di Leonard Berberi
Kelly Ortberg signals progress but says the turnaround isn’t done. «I want people to get back to where they look at Boeing and they say: “that’s what I want. I ain’t going if it ain’t Boeing”»
How do you get the largest aerospace company in the world out of the mud? Kelly Ortberg is trying to find—and deliver—an answer. Soft-spoken, with over 37 years of aerospace leadership, he has been handed one of the most daunting assignments in decades: to steady Boeing Company, the American giant, stem the cash bleed, reassure customers, and rebuild a relationship with the White House. Above all, he must tell passengers that its aircraft are still the safest, most closely scrutinized, and most reliable in the skies.
The European tour
The past year has delivered the first encouraging signs for this nearly $ 90 billion–revenue group, which employs around 182,000 people. We met Ortberg at Boeing’s offices in Rome, just steps from the U.S. Embassy in Italy, at the end of a European tour—his first since taking the helm of the company—that also took him to Brussels and Warsaw. Rome is the Boeing headquarters for Southern Europe, from which Managing
