Alaska Airlines Says Boeing Is Improving

Despite Boeing’s intense adversity, one of its most important customers, Alaska Airlines, believes it has begun turning a corner.

At the beginning of the year, Alaska Airlines was most notably impacted by a door blowout incident aboard one of its 737 MAX jets. Thankfully, while it was disturbing, all walked away from the incident physically unscathed.

However, this fallout and its impact on Alaska Airlines was colossal, with groundings, compensation and a lack of trust.

Now, almost ten months after the incident, the Alaska Airlines CEO has stated that his view of Boeing has changed quite considerably, and for the better.

The airline’s CEO hasn’t been afraid to praise the new CEO of Boeing, Kelly Ortberg, who took over from Dave Calhoun. Ortberg’s tenure across the industry and wealth of experience are key talking points.

Despite all this experience, Ortberg still has an uphill journey to go on to turn around the company. While he’ll bear much of the responsibility, it trickles down to everyone employed at the company.

Alaska Airlines believes there have been steady improvements in the planemaker’s operations, a stark contrast to how it found them earlier this year.

While Boeing battles strike action, this is ultimately unrelated to its overall production process and quality control and rather an internal affairs matter that needs rectifying.

However, in saying that, Alaska Airlines is more than wary of the ramifications that could be had for this and states it’ll continue to assess its business and will make any necessary changes.

A Change Of Tone

Comments from Alaska Airlines of this nature undoubtedly mark a change from what has become the routine surrounding the planemaker, which has typically been pure negativity.

That negativity, however, has been more than warranted, given the scope and depth of Boeing’s issues.

While the manufacturer battles things such as slowed production, it still has many valuable aircraft that are seemingly no closer to certification than five years ago, a problem for airlines.

Looking ahead, Boeing will no doubt want to hear similar commentary from Alaska Airlines from other customers as well.