Are Boeing’s problems beyond fixable?

“Kelly Ortberg is pivoting the company back to their roots,” he said. “All the employees of Boeing will rally around that.”

But Ogren of the machinists’ union cautions that previous commitments to culture change have been hollow. “You’ve got people at the top saying, ‘We’ve got to be safe, oh, and by the way, we need these planes out the door…’ They said the right thing. They didn’t emphasize it, and that’s not what they put pressure on the managers to achieve.”

When workers eventually return to work—Peter Arment, an analyst at Baird, expects the dispute to be resolved in November—Ortberg wants better execution, even if it means lower output. “It is so much more important we do this right than fast,” he said.

The company had planned to raise Max output from about 25 per month before the strike to 38 per month by the end of the year, a cap set by the FAA. It will not reach that goal and Spingarn, the Melius analyst, says the strike will probably delay any production increase by nine months to a year. Some workers would need retraining, Ortberg said, and the supply chain’s restart was likely to be “bumpy.” The manufacturer also has established a quality plan with the FAA that it must follow.

Boeing also needed to launch a new airplane “at the right time in the future,” Ortberg said. Epstein of BofA called this “one of the most important messages” from the new chief executive, likely “to reinvigorate the workforce and culture at Boeing.”

In the meantime, Boeing will continue to consume cash in 2025, having burnt through $10 billion so far this year, according to chief financial officer Brian West. Spingarn says that investors may be disappointed in the cash flow at first, but adds that “fixing airplanes isn’t one year, it’s three years.”

For all the challenges, Ortberg has the right personality to turn Boeing around, says Ken Herbert, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

“If he can’t do it, I don’t think anyone can.”

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