The top dogs of Boeing are living the high life — refusing to relocate their residences despite the aerospace giant’s push for staffers to return to the office — and instead commuting via private jet to the company’s headquarters, according to a report.
David Calhoun took over as Boeing’s CEO just before the pandemic, in January 2020.
Like most of the US workforce, he worked from home at the time between his two abodes: one that’s sprawling waterfront state at New Hampshire’s Lake Sunapee and the other that’s located in a gated resort community in Buffalo, S.C., according to The Wall Street Journal.
Flight records reviewed by The Journal showed that Calhoun has taken more than 400 trips using Boeing’s fleet of private jets. However, not all of the trips have taken him to Arlington, Va., where Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from Chicago last May.
Records showed that Calhoun used the company’s private planes to jet set around the US, making stops in California, Texas and in multiple places on Florida’s coasts, The Journal found.
Other flights headed towards Berlin, Dublin and Turks and Caicos Islands, according to the outlet.
Boeing’s board reportedly requires Calhoun to fly on Boeing-supplied private jets for all business and personal travel for security reasons, so it’s unclear which of the 400-some private flights Calhoun took were for business purposes.
Meanwhile, Boeing’s CFO Brian West, also hasn’t relocated from his home in New Canaan, Conn., where the average household income in 2021 was over $214,000, according to US demographic data firm Name Census.
West landed the gig at Boeing in August 2021.
By spring 2023, Boeing opened an office in New Canaan that’s five minutes from West’s residence, according to The Journal.
However, the new office — which Boeing is leasing for over $100,000 a year — wasn’t built to accommodate West, but rather to recruit the company’s new treasurer, David Whitehouse, The Journal reported.
Whitehouse started at the company in February and lives about 30 minutes away from the Connecticut outpost.
Calhoun and West have barely been spotted in Boeing’s Arlington offices since they opened two years ago, people who have worked there told The Journal, though there’s been a big push to get lower-ranked staffers to report in person.
Managers who report to the Arlington headquarters have reportedly been hosting happy hours, guest speakers and even inviting alpacas into the office to entice their staff to come in person, though it doesn’t seem to be working.
“People are pissed they’re being told to get their butts to the office,” Rich Plunkett, a union official for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, told The Journal of Boeing’s workforce.
Plunkett added that many employees grumble that they’re in the office doing tasks that could easily be done remotely, while Calhoun gets to stay at home when he pleases and take private jets to the office on occassion.
Boeing employees in Arlington even seem to make fun of the CEO’s absence, posting wooden “Lake Sunapee” signs in their offices –with one even drinking out of a Lake Sunapee souvenir mug that read “Love Lake Life” — in nod to Calhoun’s lakeside residence, according to The Journal.
Though it’s not unusual for a top executive to live and work away from their company’s headquarters, Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and author of “The Future of the Office,” a recent book about remote work, told The Journal that it’s out of step with current messaging from corporate America, which encourages employees to return to the office.
“If you want people to come back and you’re not doing it, that really undermines the message,” Cappelli added.
A Boeing spokesperson told The Post: “We have been transforming our leadership culture to encourage our management team to engage more frequently with employees, customers and other stakeholders. It’s why we moved senior leaders out of our Chicago office and closer to their teams three years ago, and why we continue to empower them to spend less time at corporate headquarters and more time with employees and stakeholders.”
The spokesperson insisted that increased flexibility allows its workforce to be “most productive and supportive of our global business.”
“We’re pleased that this approach has allowed us to attract top talent across disciplines as we continue to execute our recovery plans.”
Though some positions require full-time attendance, about 30% of recent job postings shared by Boeing were for hybrid or entirely remote positions.
Boeing’s website shows 128 open job positions in Arlington, Va., most of which require candidates to be able to report to an office.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
