Is battered Boeing finally turning the corner? After years of safety crises, production halts, and bruising headlines, the company’s reputation and bottom line have been under intense pressure from regulators, airlines, and investors alike.
Now, with new leadership and restored confidence from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing faces a pivotal moment to prove it can once again build commercial airliners the world trusts.
Has Boeing’s CEO Kelly Ortberg initiated the substantial reforms necessary to get this storied aircraft manufacturer back on track? Signs are promising, but the verdict is still out. Let’s take a closer, unvarnished look.
For years, Boeing had to beg permission from the FAA for every single 737 MAX or 787 it finished. Not anymore. As of September 29, 2025, Boeing has partially regained the ability to perform final safety inspections and issue airworthiness certificates on those jets.
Why did Boeing lose that privilege in the first place? After the 2019 737 MAX crashes (Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines), the FAA pulled back Boeing’s certification power entirely, citing the company’s overreliance on its own engineering teams and a culture of cutting corners. In 2022, the FAA likewise stripped Boeing of self-certification for the 787 Dreamliner, after repeated production quality lapses were flagged.
Now, the new model is a hybrid: Boeing and the FAA take turns. One week Boeing issues the certificates, the next week the FAA does. Inspectors remain embedded in Boeing factories at all times, scrutinizing critical assembly steps, watching for design compliance, and ensuring the internal culture isn’t slipping back into “profit first, safety second” mode.
The FAA argues this frees up its inspectors to concentrate on upstream production quality, rather than rubber-stamping the final act. It’s a symbolic—and practical—handback of trust.
Production, Output, and the Race with Airbus
Regaining certification powers is one thing. Making planes quickly enough is another.
This month, reports emerged that Boeing is preparing to raise 737 MAX monthly output to 42 jets, up from the FAA-imposed cap of 38 following last year’s midair door-plug blowout fiasco. The company has more ambitious goals: 53 a month by end-2026, assuming regulators cooperate.
Is that realistic? Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg says yes. He’s publicly expressed confidence in scaling to 42, then stepwise increases. But regulators have been more cautious. In fact, as of June 2025, the FAA says it is not actively considering lifting the 38-jet cap yet. The FAA’s reluctance is understandable: the door-plug incident rattled confidence in Boeing’s quality assurance across the board.
Meanwhile, Boeing isn’t ignoring the widebody side. The company aims to boost 787 output from around 5 per month to perhaps 7, then maybe more, to chip away at Airbus’s dominance in long-haul markets.
This output race matters because Airbus’s A320 family has recently claimed the title of most-delivered passenger jet in history, a crown Boeing once thought was safe from envy. Gaining momentum, or at least reclaiming lost ground, depends on Boeing pushing out certified jets fast (but safely).
Culture, Leadership, and the Long Road to Redemption
Restoring certification is a milestone, but it doesn’t erase years of missteps. The question: Is CEO Ortberg doing the tough surgical work now?
Ortberg, installed in August 2024, knows he was brought in to right the ship. His public posture is one of humility and urgency: he speaks often of “lessons learned,” rebuilding trust, and re-centering engineering rigor. He’s also pressed to get delayed MAX variants (the -7 and -10) certified by year’s end.
But can speeches and memos change decades of internal behavior? For a long time, Boeing backers and critics alike believed the company traded its engineering soul for quarterly profits—cutting staff, squeezing suppliers, putting schedule before safety. That played a major role in the MAX disasters and the erosion of public confidence.
To reverse that, Ortberg has to do the uneasy things: rehire or rebuild engineering talent, enforce whistleblower protections, hold managers accountable when quality systems fail, and resist shortcuts (both psychological and financial) in the name of speed.
So far, signals are positive.
By mid-2025, Boeing is beginning to tamp down its cash hemorrhage and regain financial discipline. In Q2, it recorded positive operating cash flow of about $227 million, a dramatic turnaround from the $3.9 billion cash outflow in the same quarter a year earlier.
On the revenue side, Boeing sharply increased deliveries (150 commercial jets in Q2) and leveraged its backlog (totaling $619 billion) to drive higher revenue ($22.7 billion in Q2, up 35% year-over-year) and improve margins.
In Q2 2025, Boeing did not record a profit. Instead, the company posted a net loss of about $612 million. However, Boeing’s losses narrowed significantly in the second quarter due to a large increase in commercial aircraft deliveries and improved revenue.
So far, Ortberg is succeeding in executing a turnaround at Boeing, by restoring discipline, transparency, and engineering rigor across the company. He’s cut through layers of bureaucracy, returned key safety and quality oversight to Boeing’s own teams after years of FAA-imposed limits, and refocused production on meeting delivery schedules without shortcuts.
Ortberg has also streamlined leadership ranks, bolstered supplier relations to stabilize output, and emphasized accountability from the factory floor to the C-suite. And we’re seeing a rebound in Boeing’s stock price. But a full recovery will take time; it will be a marathon, not a sprint.
China, Trade, and the Grand Order Gamble
If Boeing pulls this off, its comeback might be sealed by a deal in China, the very market it mostly ceded to Airbus in recent years.
In August 2025, Boeing entered advanced talks with China for a potential order of up to 500 aircraft, mixing single-aisle jets and widebodies. That would be Boeing’s largest China order in years, and possibly a bellwether in U.S.–China aviation/trade relations.
China had suspended Boeing deliveries amid political tensions, but recent comments from Ortberg suggest deliveries will resume soon. For Boeing, landing that sale would mean not just billions in revenue, but symbolic validation that the world trusts it again.
Meanwhile, Airbus has made deep inroads over the past decade in Asia, especially in China, so a big Boeing win there would help claw back market share.
Final Verdict — Is Boeing Turning the Corner?
So, has Boeing regained its stature? Considerable progress has been made, but there’s more work to be done. The FAA’s partial restoration of certification power is more than a gesture, but it’s not a pass.
Boeing is not out of probation; oversight remains intense. The output goals are ambitious and dependency on regulatory cooperation remains a choke point.
The culture shift under Ortberg looks steadier than under past regimes, but results will matter far more than rhetoric.
If Boeing nails quality, meets output, avoids further safety stumbles, and seals that China deal, then yes—this could become the turning point in one of corporate America’s most bruising redemption arcs.
Editor’s Note: This article is an edited transcript. My video contains the full report, including charts.
