US President Donald Trump is furious. He still doesn't have his planes. In 2018, the Pentagon had ordered two Boeing 747-8s for Air Force One, the presidential fleet. They were to be delivered in 2024. The newly returned American president isn't even sure he'll get them back before the end of his term. The Department of Defense hopes at best to have them in 2028.

Nothing is certain anymore when it comes to Boeing, now America's sick man, but once the world's leading aircraft manufacturer, and still the country's leading exporter. Since the two 737 MAX accidents in 2018 and 2019, which claimed the lives of 346 people, nothing has gone right for the company founded in 1916. The firm posted a loss of almost $11.8 billion in 2024, bringing the total loss since 2019 to $35 billion. Problems with quality have drastically reduced production rates, and the company suffered 50 days of strikes in 2024.

How to weather such a storm? Arriving in August 2024 at the head of a company in chaos, Kelly Ortberg, former CEO of Rockwell Collins, is doomed to optimism. And clearly, he has no shortage of it. On Tuesday, January 28, he said he was satisfied with Boeing's work, the day the company presented its results.

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