Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies, and fresh ideas in global business. On today's program, we're jetting off to the UAE for a look back at the big deals and major news from the Dubai Air Show. First, we hear from one of Boeing's top executives about the company's Middle East strategy.
There has been an enduring trust in Boeing here, and it's just exciting to be in a part of the world where there's a can do attitude. It's extremely important.
And later in the program, Monle's golf correspondent, Inam Rashid, will join me with a roundup of all the commercial action. Insy, what caught your eye in Dubai?
Deals, deals, and more deals on the tarmac at Dubai Air Show. More than $200 billion worth of airline and aircraft deals taking place in Dubai. It was pretty spectacular to see.
More from Enzy on that coming up on The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.
You're listening to the entrepreneurs. The Dubai Air Show has just wrapped and its theme was the future is here. The event was marked by record orders and brought together more than 200 aircraft and around 1,500 exhibitors including Boeing. After a turbulent few years, the aerospace giant landed the show's biggest single deal with Emirates's new widebody order. Monaco's golf correspondent Inmam Rasheed caught up with senior vice president of the Boeing company and president of Boeing Global, Dr. Brendan Nelson, at the event. Enzy began by asking why the Dubai Air Show remains such an important moment for the company.
As far as Boeing is concerned, to be back here at the Dubai Air Show in many ways is like a home away from home. Our company has eight decades of not a relationship but a partnership with the Middle East. And we have quite an immense presence in and commitment to the Middle East. We've got 700 employees across the region. The Dubai Air Show is the centerpiece in many ways of promoting the commercial aeroplane sector in the Middle East. We've got very significant relationships here with customers, with governments, suppliers, stakeholders, partners in universities, in innovation, research, and development. And it's just exciting to be in a part of the world where across the region, whether you're talking about the United Arab Emirates or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or Qatar, Kuwait or Jordan, Bahrain and the many other countries in the region, there's a can do attitude. And the other thing that's really important and I say to people, and you've spent some time obviously in regions outside the Middle East, but I say to people, you need to come here. You need to see it. You need to feel it. And you need to hear it. And if you want an example of the enthusiasm and the confidence that's in this part of the world, the Dubai Air Show showcases not just unbelievable aircraft and emerging capabilities in aerospace, but also reflective of the vision and strategies being pursued by leadership in the region of economic diversification, of tourism, infrastructure, innovation, research and development, sustainability. This is where it's heading.
And particularly this region and this market as well when we look around here and we see the big players on display using your aircraft as well. This market in particular, what why is that so strong for Boeing? Why is it such an important market and a growing market for Boeing?
Well, firstly, as I said, you've got leadership across the region, the countries in the region that has a can do attitude. There's a confidence that's driving economic and social development in the region. Our commercial market outlook for the region is for 3,475 planes over the next 20 years. We know we're going to have to recruit around 230,000 people to fly and support and crew those aircraft. We know that the growth each year in commercial aviation in the region will be about 3.9% per annum and 4.4% growth in passengers. And importantly, a lot of people outside the region don't realize that within 8 hours you can fly to cover 80% of the world population and 70% of global GDP. And then in terms of being a market for us, we've got Emirates, it's the biggest trip 7 operator in the world, Airways the biggest 787 operator in the world, and Fly Dubai is our biggest 737 7 max operator in the region. Then when you add to that the support that we give in the defense space for C17s, Shnooks, Apaches, tankers, F-15s, UAVs and providing support to them in maintenance services and parts, and then add to that the work we do in partnering with nine universities in research and technology and developing the unmanned advanced air mobility space. It's extremely important.
In terms of some of those big players that you mentioned, there's clearly now and still a lot of confidence in Boeing and what Boeing does. Have you felt that being on the ground here at the air show that the confidence in Boeing is very much there from the big players?
I can feel that confidence. There has been an enduring trust in Boeing here whilst recognizing that in recent years, in the recent past, we've had quite significant challenges as we emerge from the global pandemic and all the consequences of that. If we go back seven or eight years, the two tragedies for the 737 and the drowning god and the issues we had in production. But through all of that, this region, our customers in this region, the governments in this region have remained very committed to Boeing and supporting us. And the feel I have, I mean, you can contest it if you like. The feel I have and people have said to me, it's great to have Boeing back. And clearly, we're a company that is turning and you've seen very significant improvements in our production quality and the safety of our products. Certainly the rate of production has increased, increasing confidence coming to us from the FAA as we go through our improvements to the quality of our production, and as I say the delivery of our products, and our customers themselves are saying, 'Div, this is the best planes we've had in years.' And the biggest challenge we've got with a backlog of 6,000 aircraft, our biggest challenge is producing those planes as safely and as efficiently as we can.
Is that what it feels like? That you're kind of at this kind of turning point. You're maybe, you know, kind of done all the reflecting. You've done all the kind of looking over the challenges of the last few years and you're at a turning point now for the good.
I do not want for one moment your listeners to think that there's any sense of overconfidence in this. We are confident in our people. We are confident in what we have done to address the challenges that we've had. We slowed our production rate significantly. We introduced six critically important KPIs for production quality. We put it right across our commercial production line. We had stand downs of 70,000 of our staff across 20 manufacturing sites. We listened to our staff for their own ideas. We implemented the ideas they put forward. We heavily invested in tools and equipment in extra training. We're putting training into our entry-level managers, the men and women who are actually managing small groups of teams in our production lines. We're heavily investing now also in our senior management. We changed our CEO in August 2024. Kelly Ortberg came in and he said there are four pillars upon which the future of this company is going to be built. The first he said is culture. The values and the behaviors, the way we treat one another, the way we treat and interact with our customers, our stakeholders, our suppliers, and drawing on the views and ideas of our staff. We now have five critical values informed by behaviors and that was his first priority. Second was to stabilize the company, both the balance sheet and the production line. Both of those have now occurred. The third is execution. We're working through the certification process on the 737 variants, the trip 7X and also the defense contracts which have been a problem for us and it's fair to say that in recent years we've let down our customers at times and we've eroded trust. I'm confident now that that is certainly being rebuilt. And the fourth thing that he said is we got to think about the future. So at the same time as we emerge from our financial challenges and other challenges, we continue to invest heavily in research and development and thinking about the future of aviation. So those are the things that we're doing and we have done, and I'm confident we're on the right track.
Just on that point of reflection that you've had over the last few years, have you had to have very frank discussions, to be very honest with yourselves internally in order to try and get out on the other side? You know, as someone who's come from a political background, you know, those conversations are often had at very high levels of government. Have you had to do that within the organization here as well?
