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.
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.
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“There is work underway across Boeing to improve our culture, restore trust and deliver for our customers,” the company said in a statement. “While there is work to do to return Boeing to its former legacy, these actions and the right culture will set the foundation for the future of our company.”
Here’s how a narrowly averted catastrophe presaged Boeing’s year of struggles.
Safety concerns mount
Boeing has been grappling for years with the fallout from two crashes of its 737 Max, the first in 2018 in Indonesia and the second in 2019 in Ethiopia, which combined killed 346 people. Investigators said the crashes were caused by a flawed software upgrade that caused the planes to plunge wildly under certain flight conditions.
A deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department was due to expire in January, which would have helped Boeing move beyond the threat of criminal liability in the tragedies.
But then the door panel blew out on the Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, 2024, two days before the agreement was set to expire. A preliminary federal report found that the door plug appeared to have been removed and then reinstalled at a Boeing factory without four bolts needed to keep it attached.
That and other revelations led to heightened scrutiny of the company’s procedures and unearthed a string of quality issues, culminating this summer in a two-day hearing held by the National Transportation Safety Board. The hours of testimony and documents released by the agency revealed that the company’s manufacturing problems persisted for years.
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Other incidents raised concerns about how Boeing dealt with employees who expressed safety concerns. In March, a whistleblower involved in a long-running lawsuit that alleged Boeing retaliated against him died by suicide. In April, another whistleblower told a Senate committee that the company sidelined him after he flagged safety issues.
Boeing has said retaliation is prohibited and has reiterated its commitment to safety. In a statement, the company said it evaluated whistleblower claims and in some cases made improvements to its factory processes. Boeing said its investigations into whistleblower claims determined “none of their claims about airplane safety were … valid.”
Compounding Boeing’s problems, the company’s Starliner spacecraft returned to Earth in September without its two astronauts on board. Issues with failing thrusters and helium leaks forced NASA to decide to leave the two astronauts on the International Space Station for months longer than planned. They are scheduled to return home in March aboard a SpaceX aircraft.
On Sunday, a crash in South Korea of a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air killed 179 people. Officials have not determined a cause but reported warnings of a bird strike in the moments before the disaster.
Government investigations pile up
Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters in August that documents and interviews with workers show that Boeing has known for years about problems in its manufacturing program.
“Why does it take a serious tragedy, which could have been so much more serious, for change to occur?” she said.
The Justice Department opened a criminal probe into the mid-flight blowout early last year, revealed just weeks after the Federal Aviation Administration told Boeing in February that it had 90 days to come up with a comprehensive plan to improve quality control. Boeing submitted a safety plan in May.
At a hearing in June, senators pressed then-CEO Dave Calhoun about safety lapses hours after releasing a committee report that said Boeing eliminated quality inspectors and put manufacturing workers in charge of signing off on their own work. Calhoun apologized at the hearing to the families that lost loved ones in the 2018 and 2019 crashes.
In June, federal prosecutors recommended to senior Justice Department officials that Boeing face criminal charges for failing to meet the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement. Prosecutors declined to say whether the Jan. 5 midair blowout factored into their decision that Boeing had breached the terms of the deal. Families of passengers who died in those crashes urged prosecutors to take the case to trial, but officials declined, saying a plea agreement was the best way to hold Boeing accountable.
However, in December, a judge rejected a plea deal between Boeing and the Justice Department in which Boeing would have agreed to plead guilty to one count of fraud and pay $243.6 million in penalties, as well as invest $455 million in its safety, quality and compliance program and submit to oversight by an independent monitor for three years. The judge’s decision left the legal battle over the crashes unresolved.
Executives step down
Calhoun said in March that he would step down as chief executive at the end of the year, retiring after serving in the role for more than four years. Board chair Larry Kellner said at the same time that he would not run for reelection, and commercial airlines CEO Stan Deal retired in March.
Ortberg, the former CEO of Rockwell Collins, was named Boeing’s new leader in July, the same day the company announced a second-quarter net loss of $1.4 billion, more than triple that of a year earlier.
Ortberg’s appointment was met with optimism from many Boeing employees, who were pleased with his engineering background and decision to be based in Seattle, where most of the company’s workforce is located, rather than in its corporate headquarters of Arlington, Virginia.
“There is much work to be done, and I’m looking forward to getting started,” Ortberg said before officially taking over.
His most immediate challenge was attempting to head off a strike by members of Boeing’s largest employee union. However, the company took a tough negotiating against the union’s demands. Workers were not pleased.
Boeing workers walk out
In an overwhelming vote, 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 and W24 walked off their jobs on Sept. 13, saying an offer that included a 25 percent raise and a commitment to build the company’s next new airplane in Seattle couldn’t make up for years of stagnant wages and hardball tactics that forced concessions, including the loss of the traditional pension program.
Production of some of Boeing’s best-selling jets ground to a halt. Apart from pay, some machinists said the company’s culture had become more focused on profits in recent years than on safety and engineering.
“These jobs have fed families in this community for generations and generations and generations, and most people now don’t want to recommend their kids to go and work there,” one worker told The Post.
After nearly two months of failed negotiations, Boeing machinists voted to end the strike. The four-year deal included a 38 percent raise over four years and a $12,000 ratification bonus for agreeing to the contract.
Production numbers lag
After the Alaska Airlines door-plug incident, the FAA imposed a limit on the number of 737 Max jets that Boeing may produce each month, pending a determination that the company is following its own quality-control procedures.
This delay, combined with earlier challenges, has affected airlines worldwide. In April, United encouraged pilots to take unpaid time off despite high demand for air travel from passengers. And Southwest Airlines, which flies only Boeing planes, said it would temporarily halt hiring while it assessed its capacity.
Boeing said in October that it would delay the launch of its 777X plane, which it will market as the largest twin-engine jet in the world, from this year to 2026. It also announced it would cut about 17,000 jobs – 10 percent of its workforce – as its financial woes deepened.
In December, the company said it would expand its operations in South Carolina to help with increased 787 production.
Finances take a tumble
The company has posted annual losses every year since 2019. It reported a more than $6 billion loss for the quarter ending in September, its largest since airline travel slowed to a crawl in 2020 early in the pandemic.
Its stock price has also taken a hit as it weathered crises, plummeting about 30 percent in 2024.
When announcing the most recent financial results in October, Ortberg said the company is at a “crossroads.” His mission, he said, is to turn “this big ship in the right direction.”