On July 31, shortly after posting another round of disappointing earnings for Q2, the Boeing Co. announced that its new CEO will be Kelly Ortberg, former chief of aerospace giant Rockwell Collins. Ortberg's choice was something of a surprise. His name hadn't been mentioned as a candidate until the previous day, when aviation news site Air Current reported that the board had placed him at or near the top of its short list. Even in speculative chatter on the search, Ortberg hadn't been mentioned, in part because he'd left his previous top job heading aerospace at RTX five years ago, and hadn't taken an operating position since. Ortberg's also 64, deemed at the high end of the age range for a leader who ideally would shepherd the planemaker through the several-year development cycle for the all-new, clean-sheet plane that will be crucial in charting the future for Boeing. (Boeing waived its mandatory retirement age of 65 for Ortberg.)
After a search where the Boeing board had relatively few good options, and such preferred picks as Larry Culp of GE Aerospace and Dave Gitlin of Carrier Global weren't available, Boeing had narrowed the field to three outsiders, according to sources who spoke to Fortune. High on the roster was Pat Shanahan, a former top Boeing executive who now runs Spirit Aerosystems, the Boeing fuselage supplier that it recently agreed to acquire. But my sources indicate that current CEO David Calhoun didn't want Shanahan, who's known as a highly aggressive, no-nonsense manufacturing specialist who commands respect on the factory floor. Though Stephanie Pope, the commercial airplanes chief and former CFO, was widely cited as one of the top three, my sources all stated that the Boeing board was strictly set on an outsider who could reform its wounded culture to focus on quality and reliability in manufacturing, and at the same time provide a long-term vision that encompasses plans for a long-overdue next-gen aircraft that would bolster Boeing's fading position versus Airbus in the narrow-body market for the decades ahead. (Information on Ortberg's pay package hasn't yet been disclosed.)
