back to article Boeing's Q2 nosedive buoyed by appointment of new CEO

Boeing missed the mark on pretty much every analyst expectation in Q2 as it continues to struggle to recover from a series of devastating engineering failures. Reporting its Q2 numbers this morning, Boeing revealed the company experienced a net loss of $1.4 billion – nearly 10 times the amount it lost in the second quarter of …

  1. steelpillow Silver badge
    Coat

    Ode to a beancounter

    You divested your Spirit.

    You killed hundreds of people.

    You recovered your Spirit too late.

    Now, at last, you are fired,

    an engineer takes over,

    and the owners of your beans love it.

    There is more to beans than counting them.

    1. NoneSuch Silver badge

      Re: Ode to a beancounter

      "Lipstick on a pig," came to mind.

  2. EricM Silver badge

    Boeing missed the mark on pretty much every analyst expectation in Q2

    If Mr Ortberg does what needs to be done, e.g. fixing the way Boeing develops and builds planes, Boeing will miss market expectations for many years to come, as those are based on past performance, which in turn was based on ignoring gaping security problems in its development and build processes and a workforce who was trained to and rewarded for "looking the other way".

    In other words: Boeing not missing the mark constantly for the years to come means that its development and production processes are not being fixed, but deficiencies continue to be concealed.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Boeing missed the mark on pretty much every analyst expectation in Q2

      If the analysts expected better than what happened they need to start looking around them at what's actually happening out there.

  3. fg_swe Silver badge

    Show MEASURES

    +Move HQ back to the main factory

    +Management by Wandering Around instead of bullshitters meetings

    +Training Programs for all technical employees. Both theoretical and applied.

    +Strict Drug Testing. Help those who are addicts off the stuff. Those who cant do that, let them go.

    +Get rid of DEI Marxism and their social science vodoo priests

    Can the new guy do this ?

    1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Show MEASURES

      JD, is that you?

      You forgot something about "childless cat ladies" in your rant.

      You started out reasonable and then couldn't help yourself. Did the upvoters not read beyond the first 3 bullet points?

    2. Gary Stewart Silver badge

      Re: Show MEASURES

      Does drug testing include C suites, board members, and bean counters? My guess would be probably not which would be a shame since they are the ones that got Boeing into this mess.

      DEI Marxism and their social science vodoo priests? Every time I read this crap I just feel exasperated at the current level of intelligence in a large part of the US population (native and lifelong Texan here).

      Well at least the bean counters job will be a lot easier with so many fewer beans to count.

    3. Atomic Duetto

      Re: Show MEASURES

      I had to google that. That said, I’m none the wiser what it has to do with doors falling off aircraft or astronauts left in space. Honestly, you guys need to stop gaslighting and arguing with each other. You’re (we’re) all going around in circles.

  4. fg_swe Silver badge

    Top Notch U.S. Aerospace

    Elon Musk has the Right Stuff. He cut down cost of spaceflight, made it highly reliable and made economic rocket reuse possible.

    And with the other hand he launched thousands of gamechanger sats.

    He is brave enough to hold the woke dollarmen to the fire, much needed !

    If Mr Ortberg cant fix Boeing, merge it with SpaceX !

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Top Notch U.S. Aerospace

      All those Starlink satellites have certainly been a gamechanger for astronomers.

      1. fg_swe Silver badge

        Stargazing

        ...can be done also from space, without the fluctuating refraction changes(flickering) of the atmosphere.

        See Hubble and followers. Great success.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Stargazing

          The numbers of telescopes below Starlink and much greater than those above. They're also easier to service (although that didn't always happen. Availability of instrument time matters.

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Top Notch U.S. Aerospace

      Elmo did nothing. The scientists and engineers did.

      Elmo also did his best to obstruct them at every turn.

      https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-employees-elon-musk-focus-twitter-ceo-2023-1

      1. fg_swe Silver badge

        Great Man Musk

        Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the rest of the porkbarrel industry employed more engineers and scientists than Musk. They achieved very little compared to investor-entrepreneur-engineer Musk.

        He made lots of great things happen, for example he rejuvenated the U.S. sat launcher industry, to great dismay of AIRBUS of Germany and France. Meanwhile Boeing bought Russian rocket engines and had no real intention to improve them. Porkbarrelers to the core.

        Of course Marxists hate real entrepreneurs.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Great Man Musk

          Perhaps Boeing etc management were more successful that Musk at getting in the way. After all there's only one of him (thankfully) and he can't be everywhere at once.

    3. Casca Silver badge

      Re: Top Notch U.S. Aerospace

      woke? Sure buddy. Now go back to twitter

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Top Notch U.S. Aerospace

      That sound like a good idea. Musk will buy thousands of nvidea chips for boeing and turn them into an ai company, to be cheered on by the stockholders who will vote to grant him $54 billion in boeing shares.

  5. ecofeco Silver badge

    New CEO?

    It's not going to help. Their culture is rotten to the core.

    1. Marty McFly Silver badge
      Go

      Re: New CEO?

      Why do you say that it isn't going to help? Company cultures come from the top down, so that is where the first change needs to be made.

      I am surprised El Reg missed the opportunity to snipe at this detail... It was 27 years ago today that McDonnell-Douglas & Boeing merged. That damage isn't going to be un-done overnight. However, I suspect much of the current old-guard leadership from that era is reaching the end of their corporate tenure and are ready to hang it up.

      It is actually the same playbook from when the era started. The Boeing leadership that 'grew up' in the 1960's & 1970's heyday were ready to retire, and the McDonnell-Douglas culture disproportionally filled the vacuum in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

      I'll bet there is a lot more middle & upper leadership turnover in the next few years than is the typical norm. And that is opportunity to quickly shift the culture.

      Whether the change will be successful is yet to be seen. But give the new CEO a chance to try before declaring a failure.

  6. Denarius Silver badge
    Unhappy

    need to flush toilet

    Unless upper manglement removed, an engineer CEO will be stymied at every turn, leading to another Board reshuffle to appoint a bean counter. ie sack board also and appoint technically trained members. As 4 Michael, whats wrong with weeding out addicts, especially those addicted to unearned bonuses ?

  7. Mast1

    Translation of an abbreviation........

    ".........to recover from a series of devastating engineering failures"

    Apologies for being a bit wordy, but isn't that a bit of shorthand for:

    ".........to recover from a series of management failures which manifested as devastating engineering failures". ?

  8. Locomotion69 Bronze badge
    Joke

    Parking ticket

    This is all peanuts. Wait till the parking fee from the ISS arrives.

  9. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Titsup

    If the Chinese C919 operates admirably for a couple of years and they are able to ramp up production I see Boeing going under quickly. The only reason the company exists and the outlook is somewhat bright it that there's little competition in the airliner market. Airbus is booked solid and Embraer too is cranking out all the jets it can.

    1. fg_swe Silver badge

      Re: Titsup

      Well, if Trump will be smart enough, Boeing could simply license Airbus designs and copy them.

      We Germans use tons of U.S. technology, why not reciprocate ?

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: Titsup

        Stick to trying to plug your rust compiler, because aerospace is well over your head.

        1. fg_swe Silver badge

          Re: Titsup

          Airbus is the undisputed king of flight control systems and flight safety.

          Americans make rookie mistakes left and right, despite being exquisite in things like stealth, sensors, sensor fusion etc.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    Fresh blood at the top

    > It lost billions and missed expectations, but fresh blood at the top has pleased shareholders

    An fortunate analogy :o

    > Boeing missed the mark on pretty much every analyst expectation in Q2 as it continues to struggle to recover from a series of devastating engineering failures.

    More like management failures, like the two MCAS disasters.

    a. The decision to mount the bigger engines on the 737

    b. The decision to not get the 737-MCAs re-certified.

    c. The decision to add MCAS that relied on a single AoA that could override pilot control on the horizontal stabilizer.

    d. The decision to not retrain the pilots on MCAS.

    1. fg_swe Silver badge

      USAF Not Better

      Their supa dupa F22 fighter had the following takeoff S.O.P:

      1.) Accelerate to 120knots

      2.) Rotate 10 degrees and get airborne

      3.) Ignore Temperature

      4.) Ignore Air Pressure

      That "worked" until one "seasoned" pilot decided to also retract landing gear asap and made a belly landing.

      They were told that their supermighty engines could essentially push them into the air in ground effect.

      One belly landing later they discovered 60% of F22 pilots did this malpractice.

      Then they figured out that rotation speed must be calculated for each airfield and weather individually. As is standard practice for all other aircraft.

      1. fg_swe Silver badge

        Re: USAF Not Better

        I hasten to add that the Russkies are even greater air cowboys. They die early and often.

        "Lets ignore the stoopid electronic ground approach warning. We are roooskies!"

        Voice of the Sukhoi test pilot before he killed himself and quite a few more passengers in a SuperJet demo flight in Indonesia.

  11. b1k3rdude

    Blah, blach, whatever.

    Im still not ever getting into one of their passenger jets.

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