Opinion: Why Boeing Remains A Work In Process

In an AW&ST Viewpoint two years ago, I stated that Boeing was on course to become one of America’s greatest industrial tragedies (Feb. 12-25, 2024, p. 11). That assessment may have struck some readers as overly stark, but events soon rendered it conservative. By early 2024, Boeing exhibited classic signs associated with large-scale industrial failures, such as rampant production problems and quality lapses. The company’s governance failures had hardened into a pattern that raised a previously unthinkable question: Does Boeing possess the institutional capacity to reverse its organizational free fall?

Today, the company deserves credit for regaining its footing. Boeing recently reported its first full-year net profit since 2018, and 2025 commercial aircraft deliveries were up sharply year over year. A change in top leadership in August 2024, a broader reset of senior operating roles and a more candid acknowledgment of systemic breakdown marked a clear departure from years of defensiveness. Factories have stabilized, and the tone toward regulators has shifted from brittle to sober.

Indeed, the rebound thus far has been nothing short of remarkable. But that is not the same as a turnaround. While the earnings report was encouraging, think of it more as a milepost in a long journey that has barely gotten started. “The company is on the right track, but it’s still very much a work in process,” a retired senior executive close to Boeing told me.

The challenge confronting Boeing is not the aftermath of a single crisis but the accumulated consequences of decisions made over decades—decisions that steadily subordinated engineering judgment to financial cadence. This was never just about airplanes or programs. It was about incentives, authority and a culture that too often treated technical dissent as little more than friction.

What gives the current effort credibility is its emphasis on the unglamorous work: slowing production to regain control, rebuilding quality systems, reinserting engineering authority into day-to-day decision-making and engaging regulators with a degree of transparency that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. These are not headline-grabbing moves; they are the necessary preconditions for restoring trust.

Still, the most dangerous phase of any corporate recovery comes after the company resets. For example, General Electric repeatedly declared itself “fixed” long before its underlying industrial and financial weaknesses were addressed, only to see new crises emerge. Management mistook stabilization for success and underestimated how quickly old habits can return once pressure eases.

That risk now confronts Boeing.

The test will come not when production flows smoothly but when suppliers stumble, schedules slip and the temptation to explain away inconvenient data resurfaces. Culture is revealed under stress. Whether Boeing’s reboot endures will depend on its willingness to protect dissent and accept short-term pain in service of long-term credibility. “Long-term success will only come from adhering to the back-to-basics strategy to which Kelly Ortberg and his team appear to be committed,” the retired executive said.

There are profound lessons here for the broader aerospace and defense community. Regulators are not obstacles to be managed but guardrails to be respected. Safety and quality must be enterprise-level priorities, not departmental concerns. Reputational capital, once spent, can be rebuilt only through consistency over time. And cultural drift can accumulate unnoticed for years; when crisis hits, leadership replacement is the precondition to cultural change, not the solution itself.

Which brings us back to Boeing. The company is no longer an industrial tragedy in the making, but neither has it convincingly escaped the forces that once put it on that path. Boeing has demonstrated that decline is not inevitable when accountability replaces denial, when top management truly believes transparency beats damage control and when engineering fully regains its voice. Change at Boeing’s scale is slow, uneven and unforgiving of complacency and hubris.

Boeing’s level of success five years from now will not hinge on a single airplane, program or leadership team. It will turn on something less visible and more consequential—whether engineering authority remains central when schedules tighten, quality metrics are protected when cash pressures return and bad news travels upward without penalty.

If those conditions hold, Boeing’s recovery will be remembered as one of the most difficult—and instructive—industrial resets in decades. If they do not, today’s progress will be seen not as a turning point but as an interlude.

Anthony L. Velocci, Jr., was editor-in-chief of Aviation Week & Space Technology from 2003 to 2012.