Boeing Global Services President and CEO Chris Raymond sits down with Lee Ann Shay to discuss a variety of aftermarket topics, including supply chain changes and outlook, integrating Spirit AeroSystems and costs.
Subscribe Now
Don't miss a single episode. Subscribe to Aviation Week's MRO Podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.
Discover all of our podcasts at aviationweek.com/podcasts.
AI-Generated Transcript
Advertisement (00:00):
MRO Americas 2026 is happening April 21-23 in Orlando, Florida. It's the ultimate event for maintenance, repair, and overhaul professionals. Connect with industry leaders, explore cutting-edge innovations, and gain the insights you need to stay ahead in the MRO world. As a listener, you can save 20% on registration with the promo code MROPodcast. Register now at mroamericas.aviationweek.com. That's mroamericas.aviationweek.com. Don't miss it.
Lee Ann Shay (00:49):
Welcome to the MRO Podcast, live from Arlington, Virginia. Today, we're going to be talking about Boeing Global Services, which logged revenues of $20.9 billion in 2025, which is an increase of 5% year over year. I'm Lee Ann Shay, Executive Editor, MRO and Business Aviation for Aviation Week. I'm here with Chris Raymond, who has three titles: Executive Vice President of Boeing and President and CEO of Boeing Global Services. He leads a business that includes parts and distribution, engineering and modifications, fleet sustainment, digital capabilities, and training. Chris stepped into this big job on January 1, 2024, so just a little over two years ago. Chris, welcome to our podcast.
Chris Raymond (01:37):
Thank you, Lee Ann. Thanks for having me.
Lee Ann Shay (01:39):
Great to have you here. During the Q4 earnings, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said, "We made significant progress on our recovery in 2025 and have set the foundation to keep our momentum going in the year ahead." Chris, what's the outlook for Boeing Global Services, including what the organization looks like after the sale of Jeppesen and ForeFlight? And will you keep the revenue split around 60% commercial, 40% military?
Chris Raymond (02:09):
Sure. Well, thanks for the question. When Kelly got here, we've been focused on really three things. One would just be the operational stability of our company, the financial stability of our company. The second one was we worked on the culture, and that's sort of a never-ending journey, but we've been very focused on that the last 18 to 24 months. And then the third thing would just be restoring trust with each of our different stakeholders.
So when we look forward right now, I've always believed aviation is really integral to modern society and economies, and we see a pretty robust overall market. I would say GDP forecasts are maybe about 2.5% over the next 20 years. Traffic growth is a little over 4% for passenger traffic, a little under for cargo, but it's a really robust market. Boeing's been putting out the Commercial Market Outlook for 20 years.
We see about 42,000 airplanes over the next 20 years. It's about 50/50 growth and replacement. I know you've covered this a lot, Lee Ann, but the retirements have slowed a bit over the last few years. So fleet age is creeping up a bit, and we think that'll continue in the near term. Right now, about 20-25% of our deliveries are going to what we would call replacement. Historically, that's been more like 50%. So the fleet age will continue to creep up, and I think that will mean for services, it will remain a pretty robust environment for the foreseeable future. We forecast it to be about 3.8% growth over the next 20 years, which would equate to about $4.7 trillion. And we think that'll be an industry that needs about 2.4 million qualified people.
Lee Ann Shay (03:51):
That's a lot of people and a lot of growth.
Chris Raymond (03:52):
It's a lot of people split between pilots, technicians, and flight crew.
Lee Ann Shay (03:58):
That makes sense. Boeing has made several changes to its aftermarket supply chain, and as we all know, the global supply chain has been in flux the last several years. Boeing introduced its new e-commerce platform in November and has made significant inventory investments, from used serviceable material to landing gear. So what do you think the supply chain will look like this year and next year? Is it stabilizing? Is this the new normal?
Chris Raymond (04:28):
I think the supply chain is stabilizing, but it's not there yet. What we see, at least, is there's rate-up on all the production facilities. So we're now in an environment where production rates are creeping up, but maybe our spare parts quantities and inventories still aren't yet healthy in all cases. And then modifications are increasing, so the demand for parts in all sectors has gone up.
We have been making a lot of inventory investments, both in our transactional spares business, our managed parts business like landing gear exchange, and our distribution business as well. So that's been a big focus of ours—to try to invest and have the inventory.
Now, on the supply side, we've had to spend a lot more time with our supplier partners in really all facets. In some cases, it's working with them technically to see how we can better design for producibility and better hit rate-up and recovery on the quantities they're producing. In some cases, we found there are places that are thin in the market, and we have to work to develop some alternate sources or just dual sources. You think about that SPS fire last year—I think that showed the industry we might need some alternate sources in some areas. So we've been working a lot on that. I would say between engineering and supply chain, we have somewhere near 300 people probably working across 100 of our supplier partners, trying to work together to get rate-up and recover quantity and output.
Lee Ann Shay (05:57):
I spoke with William Ampofo, who leads your parts and distribution business, at the Dubai Airshow, and he was talking about the launch of the e-commerce platform, which he said brought two sites together and was supposed to simplify parts purchasing across commercial, government, and business aviation. How's it working? What have customers been saying?
Chris Raymond (06:17):
I think we're in sort of a beta test where we're running both systems now. Really, what that was about was William has both our parts and distribution business and our supply chain function in our services business. What we wanted to do—we'd been focused on integrating our distribution business—was to make it easier for customers to get the whole storefront and not have the historical separate accounts they had to go through to access those parts. We wanted one single unified e-commerce channel, and that's what we've put in place.
We're also investing in that business in a big way on a modern SAP S/4HANA ERP system. We've turned that system on, and we're in the recovery phase of having turned it on, but that's a big investment in the future of our distribution business and also in the skills of our people. They'll be getting trained now on the world's most modern ERP system. So that's been a big focus area of ours, and the unified e-commerce portal is, I hope, the visible part of that to the customers.
Lee Ann Shay (07:15):
Well, just even the technology upgrade of this SAP system sounds like a big investment and also a good foundation for building this up.
Chris Raymond (07:22):
For sure. I mean, half of our distribution business was on an SAP system, and the other half was on a legacy historical system. So we're now getting both of them onto a modern SAP system, and that will modernize that business for growth, hopefully also for just capacity and lead time improvement. It will definitely modernize our workforce as well.
Lee Ann Shay (07:45):
Sounds good. Boeing closed the acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems in December, and that purchase was designed largely to help production stability and quality, but it also includes MRO. So what is happening with that integration, and how will it impact Boeing Global Services?
Chris Raymond (08:02):
Yeah, there are kind of three main areas where that touches Boeing Global Services. One, Spirit had a big aftermarket business. In fact, they were a fabrication and a supplier to some of our spare parts business, so that will be relatively straightforward to get integrated into our transactional spares business. They also had MRO capacity in the United States, so that will come to our business as well, and we'll figure out how to best integrate that MRO capacity into our services business.
And then the third piece was really the Belfast operations of Spirit, which, as you probably saw, are now called Short Brothers, a Boeing company in Belfast, and that also connects to our services business. So we're working with them on operational stability and what their path to the future is, and that'll take the better part of the year to work on the integration of those three things.
And so that's what we're all about now. Let's get those three things integrated. Let's work on all the transitional service agreements, and let's retire the risk of those and get the capability integrated into the business.
Lee Ann Shay (09:04):
So I should follow up with you in about a year on that.
Chris Raymond (09:06):
That'd be great.
Lee Ann Shay (09:08):
And under your business, you also have cabin modifications, freighter conversions, and cabin refresh and connectivity, which have been such hot topics lately. How's that part of your business?
Chris Raymond (09:19):
We really saw strong demand for that. What we have to really focus on for customers, though, is reducing the lead times on that. Some of that gets into the certification timelines and the new certification rules around things like aircraft seats or interiors or just the certification timelines that we've seen.
But the demand for those mods is good. Back to the fleets are being kept longer, and so that has generated a big mods business for interiors. Things like seat refreshes, stow bins, the new space bins for the airplanes, and connectivity.
To your point on the connectivity side, we put a lot of investment into something we called AeroShroud, which is a structural housing for the airplane. It should let these new antenna systems for low-Earth-orbit satellites and connectivity more easily come and be modified into the airplane and upgraded over time. That's what we really focused on with that investment.
Lee Ann Shay (10:18):
So Boeing sold Jeppesen and ForeFlight, which you already mentioned, but you still have a lot of digital capabilities. Airplane health management has been around for a long time, plus more condition-based maintenance sorts of things. So what is your outlook for digital, and especially since this is the MRO Podcast, costs. It all kind of comes down to reliability and cost. Are there any things that you can tell me that you're working on or how the digital pieces are continuing to impact reliability?
Chris Raymond (10:46):
Sure, yeah. We're very focused on that. And in fact, a big reason we kept what we kept was focused on our aircraft reliability and availability and also what we see in the future around condition-based maintenance changes and things like that.
So we kept tools that have to do with our maintenance documentation, that have to do with our aircraft reporting, and things like that. So you'll see us stay in that game, including on the flight deck with things like our onboard performance tool or tail-specific reporting.
Crystal Remfert is going to run that business for us. She is going to be in our cabin modifications and maintenance business, and we connected the remainder of our digital services business to that business. And we did that intentionally because we think it's going to have a future role with connectivity and with the connection back to our parts and distribution business.
Lee Ann Shay (11:35):
Lots of good stuff. Well, we've run out of time, unfortunately. But Chris, thank you so much for being on our podcast. Really appreciate your insights.
Chris Raymond (11:43):
Thanks for covering the industry, Lee Ann. Really appreciate being with you.
Lee Ann Shay (11:46):
Well, we hope you will join us again. That's a wrap for this MRO Podcast. Don't miss the next episode by subscribing to the MRO Podcast wherever you listen to them. And one last request: Please consider leaving us a star rating or writing a review. Thank you.
Advertisement (12:04):
MRO Americas 2026 is happening April 21-23 in Orlando, Florida. It's the ultimate event for maintenance, repair, and overhaul professionals. Connect with industry leaders, explore cutting-edge innovations, and gain the insights you need to stay ahead in the MRO world. As a listener, you can save 20% on registration with the promo code MROPodcast. Register now at mroamericas.aviationweek.com. That's mroamericas.aviationweek.com. Don't miss it.
Related Content
