>> also be a pilot with the suitable type ratings to fly the stuff they build.
Why the pilot? When it comes to handling these machines, the pilots are one small corner. I would think that someone with experience keeping them safe and functional would be more on point these days. How about someone with the ratings for maintaining the machines? No pilot has ever inspected let alone installed a door plug.
It takes ~ 50 hours to get a pilot license and understand what is that. You don't need ATPL as a CEO, but flying regularly will keep you connected in a way that cannot be substituted, definitely not by the glasshouse that is a MBA.
Can you be a successful CEO of a car manufacturer if you cannot drive a car?
50 hours? To fly an airliner you need way more than 50 hours. This isn't bouncing around the circuit in a Cessna. Boeing sells aircraft for use by airlines. Short of a handful people who own their own, to fly an airliner you need to be employed by an airline. You generally need something more like 1500 to 3000 hours before an airline is going to trust you with their equipment.
Read again. I said you don't need ATPL to be the CEO of Boeing. If you don't agree, state that, don't pick on the 50 hours because you are wrong there. And don't be pedantic about ATPL requirements, I am a pilot and I know how this works. I do support my original comment.
If you're not flying it in passenger revenue service, I believe the requirements get a lot fuzzier - I would expect you'd need at a minimum a commercial multiengine cert to get rated for airliners, but I don't know that you actually need the ATP, unless you're going to fly in revenue service.
And, tbh, I don't care if the CEO of Boeing can take one around the pattern on their own. If they need a rated instructor with them to go fly one legally, so be it. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.
But I stand by my statement that the CEO should be able to understand airplanes and fly them reasonably competently, if they're the CEO of a company that builds airplanes. I don't mean "press release of them flying it straight and level on autopilot" - but to actually be able to get it competently around the sky in manual flight modes.
I consider the financialization (turning into loan servicers and financial service providers as their main stream of income) of "every company who used to build things" to be one of the worst things that's happened to American industry as a whole.
Why the pilot? When it comes to handling these machines, the pilots are one small corner. I would think that someone with experience keeping them safe and functional would be more on point these days. How about someone with the ratings for maintaining the machines? No pilot has ever inspected let alone installed a door plug.