Boeing needs a hands-on leader who understands the business if it wants to get out of the rut it is in, says Tim Clark, the president of Emirates.
“You need a true leader, a strong person, a great communicator who understands the business,” Clark, whose company is the largest buyer of Boeing’s widebody jets, told Bloomberg’s Guy Johnson on Sunday. The aviation veteran was speaking at the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting in Dubai.
“I’ve always said it should be an aerospace engineer. It would help a lot. I’ve often used Alan Mulally as the example of that,” Clark said, referencing the former CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Ford.
Mulally served as the chief executive of Boeing’s commercial airplane programs from 2001 to 2006. The aerospace engineer and MIT graduate was lauded for his turnaround of Ford when he ran the automaker from 2006 to 2014.
Boeing’s CEO needs to take an active interest in its manufacturing operations, Clark said, adding that the company’s leader needs to start “going into factories and understanding the processes.”
“The way we run Emirates is that we have fingerprints on everything. There’s not a thing that goes on, on a day to day basis without us knowing something about it,” Clark told Bloomberg.
“So they need somebody who’s hands-on, is a great communicator, great leader, and people will respect and follow because that person understands the issues,” he continued.
‘Finance is not difficult. Engineering is.’
Clark believes Boeing’s pursuit of saving costs by outsourcing manufacturing landed it in its predicament today.
“If you spend 10 or 15 years trying to strip out from your supply chain it’s likely things will start to happen in terms of quality issues,” Clark told The Telegraph in an interview on Sunday.
“You cannot take your eye off the ball in our business. Certainly manufacturers cannot do that,” he said. “Finance is not difficult. Engineering is.”
Representatives for Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
Boeing has come under the spotlight following repeated quality-assurance lapses.
In January, a door plug flew off a two-month-old Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft during an Alaskan Airlines flight from Oregon to California. The company’s CEO, Dave Calhoun, said in March he would be stepping down at the end of this year.
Stephanie Pope, a third-generation Boeing employee who was put in charge of Boeing’s commercial airplanes division in March, is widely seen as one of the frontrunners for Calhoun’s position.
During its earnings call in April, Boeing said it had burned through $3.9 billion in cash in the first quarter of this year. The company posted a net loss of $355 million for the same quarter.
Clark said it will take years for Boeing to sort out its quality and safety issues, per Bloomberg.
“If you ask me, this will be a five-year hiatus starting from now. So I don’t think they will recapture their production lines on all aircraft types,” he said.
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