By Bryan Corliss
Herald Writer
SEATTLE — The Boeing Co. will open its new headquarters in Chicago Tuesday, but it will be business as usual for the Commercial Airplanes Group back here on Puget Sound, Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Alan Mulally said Friday.
Boeing Chairman Phil Condit and his corporate leadership team already have turned over responsibility for the group’s operation to the people who will remain here, Mulally said. And with that experience under their belts, "It’s not a big change for him to actually move," Mulally said.
Mulally made his comments after he and Condit presented the University of Washington School of Business with a $1 million donation, a parting gift to the community that will be used to create an endowed professorship in Condit’s name.
The money will be used to recruit a world-level professor to the business school, dean Yash Gupta said.
Boeing’s donations to the UW now total $48 million, given over the past five decades, said UW President Richard McCormick, adding, "There’s confidence, especially this afternoon, that this remarkable partnership will endure."
The ceremony, held on the UW campus, officially was an announcement of the donation. But it also was a public passing of the torch.
It was the last public act by Condit as leader of the Seattle-based Boeing Co. On Tuesday, Boeing will start operations from its new Chicago headquarters. It also was the first formal public act by Mulally in his new role as Boeing’s leader in community affairs.
"He (Mulally) is going to be the guy who’ll have community responsibility," Condit said.
Condit appeared a little wistful during the presentation, and spoke of someday returning to Seattle to fill the business school chair that will hold his name. "I love to teach," he told Gupta. "I have a job to do, but when that job is done, you might just have an application from me on your doorstep."
But Condit deflected a suggestion that he had bittersweet feelings about the pending Chicago move.
"I’m really very excited about where the company is," he said. "There’s nothing very bittersweet about that."
Also Friday, Condit and Mulally both said they expect Boeing to meet its target for taking new orders for 400 planes this year.
It all depends on whether the world economy gets any worse during the rest of the year, Mulally said, and there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest the worst is past.
Condit also said that it’s possible that some of the deals being worked on now won’t become firm orders until early 2002. That would make Boeing’s order total for this year look bad, but "what’s important is what comes out the door," he said.
A deal in the works with China looks better but is not final, both said.
Mulally said the company still is assessing market conditions and this year’s order totals before making any estimates about 2003 production levels. Boeing’s "still on plane" to meet this year’s production targets, he said.
He added that Boeing engineers are in the midst of wind-tunnel tests on the Sonic Cruiser. Much of the work going on right now, however, is being done by airlines that could buy the plane, he said, as they try to figure out how they could best use it.
Boeing is moving steadily toward finalizing a design, he said.
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