How to Fix Boeing: A Repair Manual

Aerospace leaders suggest ways the jet maker can pull out of its tailspin

- Sharon Terlep, Andrew Tangel, Alison Sider and Benjamin Katz

A fuselage panel that blew off in midair. Mishaps on the factory floor. Stranded astronauts. A crippling strike. Five straight annual losses.

Boeing's travails keep piling up, and that list doesn't include a pair of fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The 108-year-old jet maker this summer agreed to plead guilty in a federal criminal case related to those crashes. The string of crises has left the company bleeding cash, mired in manufacturing problems, regulators and its own employees. On Dec. 29, 179 people were killed in a South Korean crash whose cause is now under investigation.

"We're at a low here, folks," Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, told the company's employees in a November all-hands meeting.

There's a lot riding on Boeing's ability to pull out of its nose dive. Boeing is the biggest U.S. exporter and one of the world's two major manufacturers of large commercial jetliners, along with Europe's Airbus. Boeing makes jets, bombs and helicopters for the U.S. military. It makes rockets and spacecraft for NASA. It employs some 170,000 people around the world and is the central cog in a global supply chain of thousands of companies from small parts shops to multinational giants like GE Aerospace.

"Everybody wants us to succeed," Ortberg told workers. "They're all also expecting us to kind of clean up our act and, you know, deliver good products and not have these snafus." Ortberg, who took the helm of Boeing in August, has signaled his intention to shrink the company and slash layers of bureaucracy. We asked dozens of people-current and former Boeing leaders, airline executives, employees, suppliers, safety regulators and others in recent months what Boeing should do to turn itself around. Here's what they said.

Think big.