Boeing’s Next CEO: Here’s Who Could Succeed David Calhoun

After months of damaging revelations about quality issues at Boeing BA , the company announced a shakeup Monday morning. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun will step down at the end of 2024, while the head of Boeing’s commercial airplane division, Stan Deal, is out, replaced by Stephanie Pope, who was promoted just four months ago to the position of chief operating officer.

Calhoun, a longtime board member, was appointed CEO in 2020 to lead the manufacturer out of a confidence-shaking crisis over the quality of its airplanes following two crashes of its best-selling 737 MAX narrowbody. But after an early January incident in which a panel fell off an Alaska Airlines ALK 737 MAX after takeoff, the company has faced renewed doubts about the safety of its planes. Investors have now “lost faith” in Boeing management, analyst Ken Herbert of RBC Capital Markets wrote in a note Monday. And as the company scrambles to comply with a new manufacturing safety probe from the Federal Aviation Administration, a handful of airlines reportedly have demanded meetings with Boeing’s board — without Calhoun present — to air grievances.

The company’s board chair Larry Kellner, a former CEO of Continental Airlines who’s been a director since 2011, has also stepped down, and will not run for reelection. The board has elected director Steve Mollenkopf, the former CEO of Qualcomm QCOM , to serve as chairman. It will now get to work on finding a replacement for Calhoun.

The board is likely to look outside the company for Boeing’s next CEO, Loren Thompson, a longtime aerospace and defense consultant, told Forbes. “This will be a tough job to fill.”

Wall Street is hoping for someone with a “strong operational background, someone who could give investors more confidence in Boeing's manufacturing operations,” Herbert wrote.

But there aren’t many leading executives with the right manufacturing pedigree, Cliff Collier, a principal at Charles Edwards Management Consulting, told Forbes. “You need someone who knows how to throw the B.S. flag on operations when they make excuses and who can push finance back in the corner when they want to worry more about the bottom line this quarter than performance. The problem is for 15 years or so, those are the guys who haven’t been promoted in aerospace.”

Here are some of the names that have been discussed in the industry as candidates to replace Calhoun:

Lawrence Culp – After overhauling General Electric GE as its CEO since 2018, Culp is widely seen as one of America’s best industrial leaders. But he’s committed to staying with the company past the final step in its restructuring. GE will spin off its industrial power unit on April 2 and Culp will serve as CEO of GE Aerospace, the one-time conglomerate’s market-leading aircraft engine division. And having just gone through a grueling transformation process with GE, he may not want to start at square one with Boeing at age 61, an industry consultant who wished not to be named due to his work with GE told Forbes.

David Gitlin — Appointed to Boeing’s board in 2022, Gitlin has run heating and ventilation manufacturer Carrier since 2019, guiding it through its spin off from United Technologies UTX . He’s shown “strong execution and really great strategy,” Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at the consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, told Forbes. Gitlin has solid aerospace experience: he earlier led components makers Collins Aerospace and UTC Aerospace Systems. He’s also relatively young at 53.

Pat Shanahan – The February announcement that Boeing was in discussions to buy Spirit AeroSystems SPR , the struggling fuselage maker that it had spun out in 2005, ignited speculation over a potential return of Shanahan, who had just been appointed Spirit CEO in September. An engineer, he previously spent 31 years at Boeing, earning a reputation as a hard-charging problem solver at the commercial airplane division, where he rose to run the 787 program. “Shanahan has the right pedigree,” JP Morgan analyst Seth Seifman wrote in a note Monday. But it’s unclear whether the 61-year-old is interested in a long-term job. He accepted the role of Spirit CEO on an interim basis while the board looked for other candidates.

Kathy Warden – As CEO of Northrop Grumman NOC since 2019, she’s overseen the company’s relatively smooth development of the B-21 stealth bomber and architected a “remarkable” strategy to nab a $13 billion contract to develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile system for the Pentagon, said Aboulafia. Bonus: She’s also well-suited for cleaning up Boeing’s troubled defense and space unit.

Stephanie Pope – When Pope was made COO in December, it was seen as putting her in pole position to eventually succeed Calhoun. But her appointment to run the commercial airplane division makes an outside hire for CEO more likely, the analyst Herbert believes. Pope’s elevation to COO had caused head-scratching given her background in finance when the company’s problems currently revolve around production. In taking over the airplane unit, “the challenge for her will be to prove she has the ability to improve manufacturing quality,” Seifman wrote.

A wild-card candidate: Delta Air Lines DAL CEO Ed Bastian – Bastian is widely respected for turning Delta into the world’s most profitable airline, and a smoothly operating one at that. “He’s viewed as one of the best in the business and absolutely understands safety, customers and the need for innovation,” the industry consultant told Forbes. But he hasn’t run a manufacturing business.