Boeing can rebuild trust after 737 Max debacle: JetBlue chairman
Embattled aerospace giant Boeing (BA) has a decent chance to repair the trust it breached with customers in the aerospace industry, fliers and regulators, says one insider and long-time business relationship expert.
It just won’t happen overnight, much to the dismay of Boeing’s investors.
“The first thing you have to realize is that it will take a long time, you can’t talk your way out of problems that you behaved your way into. To me, that starts out with having conversations with people, listening without an agenda, figuring out what went wrong, apologizing and fixing them, keeping promises and then understanding that it will take a long time to fix,” JetBlue Chairman Joel Peterson told Yahoo Finance when asked what Boeing needs to do to repair its battered image.
Peterson, the author of ‘The 10 Laws of Trust” and veteran professor, added “I don’t think Boeing didn’t make a decision they were going to do something bad, they just failed to deliver on a promise. So I think they can recover from that.”
The Boeing 737 Max has been grounded by regulators since mid-March following a second crash that killed 346 people. It’s unclear when the plane will return to service, but its grounding has sent ripple effects throughout the aerospace supply chain. Whether customers will ever want to fly on the 737 Max again is also highly uncertain.
Boeing incurred a massive $5.6 billion charge in the second quarter to reflect compensation to key 737 Max customers for the grounding.
Even still, to Peterson’s point it will take more than a few checks from Boeing to repair its damaged image.
For its part, JetBlue (JBLU) has been somewhat unscathed from the Boeing debacle as it only flies Airbus planes.
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and co-anchor of The First Trade at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @BrianSozzi
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