AW&ST: Boeing is $44 billion in net debt, first- and second-quarter earnings were full of charges, you haven't been able to deliver 787s for more than a year, and the 777X program has had repeated delays. Are those not the signs of a company in disarray? No, they're not. They're signs of a company coming back. I started this in January of 2020.1 think everybody knows the situation [then]: a 737 MAX accident where we still had not cleared the accountability question. So we did it, quickly. We set a realistic certification path with a regulator who had lost their faith and trust in us because we kept projecting and suggesting that a cert was right around the corner, and it hadn't been. We took stock, we laid out a plan for what would take the remainder of 2020, and we got there. We got an airplane certified. So I feel like we've climbed a mountain, gotten over to the other side, and we're working our way through it, and the team has done a hell of a job. The 787 had some anomalies with respect to compliance with our own designs. None of them came close to a safety issue. The 787 has been working its way through all of those noncompliance questions. I think we're close to the finish line, but I don't get to tell you where the finish line is. I will celebrate when we move that airplane because of what our team went through and the way they responded. It was frankly amazing. I think we're turning the corner, and in this industry you don't turn the corner in a week, a month or even a quarter. I love our portfolio. I point to the spots where a 787 beats an A350 most of the time, where the 777 family will now have zero competition at the highest end of the market. The 777 is going to stand on its own for decades; the 777X will get certified. When you're flying this portfolio against that one, there's nothing that I've learned in the last 2.5 years, not one thing, that would suggest to me that our portfolio doesn't compete really well.
展开▼
