In interviews after Boeing posted its detailed financial results Tuesday, new CEO Kelly Ortberg indicated the key priorities for 2025: getting airplane production back up safely, generating much-needed cash, integrating Spirit AeroSystems smoothly back into Boeing — and coping with the realities of the new Trump administration.

Having announced Boeing’s heavy 2024 losses and cash outflow last week, Ortberg was free to look forward.

In an interview with The Seattle Times on Tuesday, Ortberg said that six months into the job he thinks Boeing is “starting to turn the corner.”

“There’s a lot of issues, but there’s a lot to feel good about in terms of the direction that we’re taking,” he said.

Boeing expects 2025 to bring increased production in its slowed-down commercial division and improved contracts in its cash-burning defense and space division, leading to a positive cash flow in the second half of the year.

In its commercial division, Boeing will increase production of the 737 Max, which has been hampered since an incident last January when a panel blew off a Max plane midflight.

On a call with analysts, Ortberg said Boeing has agreed with the Federal Aviation Administration on a path to safely increase Max production this year beyond the 38 jets per month cap put in place after the incident.

Separately, Boeing said it expects to clear out by midyear the remaining inventory of 55 Maxes that have been stored for years awaiting rework. And the rework on 25 stored 787s should be completed sometime early this year.

The rework on the Maxes is done mostly in Moses Lake in Central Washington. The rework on the 787s happens in Everett.

Shutting down what Boeing refers to as “shadow factories” will free up labor for Boeing’s other production lines, helping to drive more deliveries and reducing the massive $87.5 billion of inventory Boeing is sitting on, Chief Financial Officer Brian West told analysts.

A full return of Boeing’s competitiveness will be possible only when the company launches a new “clean-sheet” commercial jet, employees in this region and many in the industry believe.

“Boeing has already lost the 2020s to Airbus,” Melius Research analyst Scott Mikus wrote Tuesday in a note to investors. “If it wants a shot at winning the 2030s or 2040s, it will need a clean-sheet aircraft program.”

But Boeing first must get through the current financial crunch, Ortberg said.

“I got a lot of work to do to get the company in a healthy state,” Ortberg said. “We’ve got to be in a positive cash-generating position.”

Ortberg told The Seattle Times he’s “not too worried about a brain drain” of engineers as they wait to work on an ambitious new airplane project.

Boeing has plenty of challenging work ahead to solve technical issues in its current military and commercial development projects, he said, including certifying the 777X and 737 Max 7 and Max 10 variants.

One less predictable part of Boeing’s year ahead will be meeting the demands of the new Trump administration.

In an interview on CNBC, Ortberg expressed confidence that President Donald Trump will support Boeing.

“He’s keenly focused on American jobs, and he knows that the aviation industry is critically important to American jobs,” Ortberg said.

One path to Trump’s good side is already a major focus: working with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to accelerate the delayed Air Force One presidential jet program.

Musk has visited Boeing’s San Antonio, Texas, facility, where the jets are being built.

“The president wants the airplane sooner, and so we’re working with Elon and the team to figure out what can we do to pull up the schedule,” Ortberg said.

Boeing bled cash in 2024

The depth of the task to stabilize Boeing’s finances is apparent in the 2024 results.

Tuesday’s release reiterated that in the fourth quarter, Boeing lost $3.9 billion, or $5.46 per share, which means the total loss for all of 2024 was $11.82 billion, or $18.36 per share — only a tad better than the 2020 loss of $11.87 billion, the largest yearly loss ever.

And Boeing had a cash outflow in the fourth quarter of $4.1 billion. For the year, the aerospace giant burned through $14.3 billion.

Though Boeing started the fourth quarter with $10.5 billion in cash and then raised $24 billion through sales of shares and convertible debt, by the end of the year it was left with $26.3 billion.

That cash burn included repaying $3.5 billion in debt set to mature this year. Without the capital raise, it’s clear Boeing would have all but run out of cash.

Even though Boeing expects a positive cash flow in the second half of the year, West told analysts to expect a net cash outflow in 2025 of between $4 billion and $5 billion.

Nick Cunningham, an industry analyst with London-based Agency Partners, told investors that Tuesday’s public release was an opportunity for Ortberg “to start the process of laying out a route map to recovery and to tell the world what a recovered Boeing might look like.”

“But the depth of the problems revealed over recent quarters and scale of the challenge is such that it is probably too early to do that,” he added. “Management may need to remain in firefighting mode for some time yet.”

Boeing attributed last year’s losses to fixed charges from some troubled defense programs, costs associated with layoffs at the end of the year and the impacts of the Machinists strike that shuttered the company’s factories in the Puget Sound region.

The new Machinists contract will add some pressure on Boeing’s finances. But West pointed out that this labor cost remains less than 5% of the cost of building the airplanes and the long-term benefit will outweigh the costs as it enables Boeing to increase production rates.

Still, Ortberg said Boeing won’t ask the FAA to lift the cap on production until the company meets the safety and quality metrics in the safety plan agreed with the agency following the fuselage blowout.

He also promised to begin restoring “a culture of unity and accountability” at Boeing, in part by providing promotions and incentive bonuses based “not only in what we get done but how we get things done.”

“As I talk with employees, there’s a growing swell of excitement around restoring trust and getting their Boeing back,” Ortberg said.

Restarting production slowly but surely

Boeing restarted airplane production in the Pacific Northwest slowly following the strike to focus on quality management. But it’s now ticking upward.

West said Max production rate in January was in the range of 20 to 25 jets per month and Boeing expects to raise that to 42 Maxes per month by the end of the year.

All three Max production lines in Renton are now running and a fourth line in Everett will be available as production rises.

“People are back to work and excited about the task ahead, and you can feel the energy when you’re back on the factory floor,” Ortberg said.

In South Carolina, 787 production at year end was five jets per month, back up to the level of last February.

Slow certification of new premium passenger seats and shortages of a part called a heat exchanger in the jet’s environmental control system reduced the 787 production rate last year.

Ortberg said parts shortages across all the commercial jet programs are now “within their established control limit.” And West told analysts he expects the 787 rate to get up to seven jets per month this year.

Ortberg also told employees that engineering fixes for the problems that have delayed certification of key commercial jets are in the works.

The 777X test fleet was grounded in August after a heavy metal component that transfers thrust from the engine to the airframe — called a “thrust link” — broke apart on one test plane and was found cracked in the other three.

Meanwhile, the Federal Aviation Administration has demanded a fix for a flaw that could potentially disable the engine anti-ice system on the 737 Max 7 and 10 models before those can be certified.

On the 777X problem, Ortberg said, “we have a good handle on fixing the thrust link issue.” Flights resumed this month to test the solution.

On the Max 7 and 10, he said, Boeing is conducting tests “focusing on finalization of the anti-icing design solution.”

And though the financial results showed a total of $1.7 billion in write-offs on five key defense-side development projects — the KC-46 tanker and T-7 jet trainer for the Air Force; the commercial crew space vehicle; the MQ-25 aircraft carrier-based aerial refueling drone for the Navy; and the Air Force One presidential jets — Ortberg indicated he can see an end to the “quarterly drumbeat of cost growth” on these programs.

“We have completed deep dives on all of our challenging fixed-price development programs,” he told employees. “We are now more proactive and clear-eyed on the risks.”

Ortberg said Boeing is reviewing those contracts with the Pentagon to find places to reduce inefficiencies.

One of Ortberg’s most challenging tasks in the year ahead is the acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kan., the former Boeing unit that must now be reintegrated into the company two decades after it was sold off.

If not handled well, that has the potential to be a cash drain and a source of production glitches. And Boeing cannot implement that integration until it completes the acquisition and takes control, expected around midyear.

“We are actively involved and working with Spirit on the manufacturing of the parts that come in to us,” Ortberg told The Seattle Times. “We know the business. We know the people.

“I think we’ve got a good plan.”

Workforce levels

In November and December last year, Boeing laid off nearly 4,000 people to align its workforce size with its financial reality, company executives told employees.

The layoffs hit 2,600 employees in Washington, the highest concentration of layoffs among states where Boeing cut employees, according to notices filed with unemployment agencies.

On Tuesday, Ortberg said the cuts had been beneficial.

“The reductions we’ve made — we streamlined the organization, we reduced layers of overhead — I think were all necessary to make us lean and nimble for the future,” he said.

But Ortberg said he’s “not anticipating any further major reductions.”

This year, “we’ll be adjusting head count levels depending on the (production) rates and the work scope,” he added. “But I think that will be on a more normal trajectory.”

However, Ortberg told analysts Boeing still plans to sell off some units that are considered not core to the business, including the Englewood, Colo.-based Jeppesen unit, which provides electronic air navigation services.

“We may be better off focusing our energy elsewhere,” he said.

Still, this won’t mean major changes to Boeing’s business overall. Think of it as “pruning the portfolio,” rather than “cutting down the tree,” Ortberg said.

©2025 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.