• Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun — whose pay-packet is largely comprised of deferred stock tied to prices last year — received his annual compensation of roughly $23.6M for the end of the financial year on Friday. ABC News
  • Calhoun, who has already announced he’s stepping down amid Boeing’s safety troubles, was due to receive $33M in pay. However, with Boeing stocks tumbling as much as 30% since a Jan. 5 blowout of a door plug during an Alaska Airlines flight, as much as $10M was wiped off from his take-home pay. Reuters (LR: 3 CP: 5)
  • In a statement on Friday, Boeing added that Calhoun also declined to take a roughly $3M bonus — decreasing his annual payout from stocks by a quarter from what the figure was last year. ABC News
  • This follows another week of ongoing troubles for Boeing. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was reportedly hours late to a NATO meeting in Brussels after an unspecified issue with his Boeing 737 plane. It was the second time the plane had to be grounded this year. CNN (LR: 2 CP: 5)
  • On Friday, prior to the filings of Calhoun’s pay, Boeing also paid $160M to Alaska Airlines for the mid-flight incident in January. The figure takes into account that earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) temporarily ordered the grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX-9 jets, leading to further losses in income for the airline. Airways
  • Boeing will also pay Alaska Airlines additional compensation at later dates. Airways

Pro-establishment narrative:

  • Calhoun was in fact due to receive significantly more if it hadn’t been for all the problems Boeing ran into. With the stock price tumbling 30%, he has clearly also taken a personal hit — losing nearly $10M in pay.
    REUTERS (LR: 3 CP: 5)

Establishment-critical narrative:

  • Boeing had roughly $2.2B of losses in 2023 and is undergoing such a crisis that it’s reputation may never be repaired. The fact that Calhoun will still make $23.6M in stock payouts this year is absolutely staggering.
    THE SEATTLE TIMES

Nerd narrative:

  • There’s a 93% chance that there will be a test flight of a full-scale heavy-lift cargo airship before 2031, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
    METACULUS (LR: 3 CP: 3)