WOEING: Dave Calhoun was hired to fix Boeing. Instead, ‘it’s become an embarrassment.’

“It’s been three years of ‘there’s no way Calhoun can stay at the helm,’” said Aboulafia, managing director of the consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory. “But he seems to be staying at the helm … I do not get it.”

Boeing actually raised Calhoun’s total compensation in 2022, to $22.5 million, despite problems with the 777 program and quality control issues with the 787 that forced regulators to halt the company’s deliveries. Calhoun’s 2023 compensation has not yet been announced — Boeing typically reveals that information in April.

To be fair to Calhoun, he took over a company in deep distress following two fatal 737 Max crashes that landed the crucial plane in a nearly two-year-long grounding and put the company in a yearslong crisis. And the plane maker’s problems didn’t start there: The 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas is widely cited as Boeing’s poisoned chalice. It was after the merger that the bean-counter executives began taking over, gutting the joint, and putting accountants into roles once held by engineers. Maximizing profit took precedence over quality. In the short term, margins improved. But in the long term, Boeing lost the plot.

Executives at Boeing, starting in the mid-aughts, “identified an industry with tons of cash flow, high barriers to entry and only two players,” Aboulafia said, referring to Boeing’s European rival, Airbus. “It’s a recipe for getting away with bad things.”

It takes a commitment to stay with what made a company great to avoid coasting into mediocrity but “getting away with bad things” works, too — if only for a little while.