The scale of the management changes announced by Boeing are a recognition from the company of the grave situation in which it finds itself. It is pretty rare for the chairman and chief executive of an organisation to step down at roughly the same time as Larry Kellner and Dave Calhoun are doing. For the departure of another senior executive, running one of that company's most important businesses, to be announced at the same time is almost without precedent.
Their mood will not have been improved by a report in the Wall Street Journal last week that the chief executives of some of Boeing's biggest airline customers in the US had requested a meeting with Boeing's board to express concern over the Alaska Airlines accident and the subsequent production problems with the 737 MAX 9.