Boeing Business Jets president Steve Taylor
Interview by R. Randall Padfield - September 1, 2009
Steve Taylor, the new president of Boeing Business Jets, grew up around airplanes. “My first airplane ride was in an Aero Commander at age a-month-and-a-half and I have kind of been in them ever since,” he told me. “I was a kid who read airplane magazines front to back–your basic airplane geek.”
His father, Richard (Dick) Taylor, flew in the Army Air Corps during World War II and afterward worked for Boeing for 50 years, most of that time as director of engineering. He is known for his work on the 737, the two-crew flight deck and ETOPS (Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards). “My father still flies his Aerostar [a six-seat, light piston twin] at age 87,” said his son proudly. When the younger Taylor was 14, his father bought a 1958 Super Cub, a two-seat, piston-single airplane, which arrived in pieces on a trailer. The two of them put it back together and Taylor soloed it on his 16th birthday. He still has the airplane.
BBJ announced Taylor’s appointment in May. From that time, he served as company president together with his predecessor, Steven J. Hill, until July, when Hill retired. Before then, Taylor was BBJ’s chief pilot. In this interview, Taylor explains what sets BBJ apart from the rest of the Boeing organization, why the company chose him to replace Hill and how he went from aviation geek to chief pilot and then to company president.
How is BBJ different from the rest of Boeing?
Within the Boeing hierarchy, Boeing Business Jets is a sales unit. However, it is very different from the other sales organizations. We have our own field service staffers, people who are dedicated to fleet support, spare-parts people, procurement people. The airplane is unique in that it has virtually no options compared to the commercial airplanes. We’ve done all of that work. We have engineers who manage the configuration of the airplane. My role as chief pilot was to manage the flight deck and make sure that it had the latest possible avionics.
BBJ tries to be the face of Boeing to business jet customers. The Boeing Company can be very challenging to work with because it is so big. If a BBJ customer called the Boeing switchboard, he would have a hard time getting to the right person. So we try to provide a buffer so that all of our customers know us on a first-name basis. They know to call me and the people dedicated to field service, and then we take on the challenge of going into Boeing Commercial Airplanes and getting that customer’s problem taken care of.
Why did Boeing decide to make you, the BBJ chief pilot, its president?
When they were looking to replace Steve Hill, they were looking at two different sets of résumés. The question was, do you want a president who understands the BBJ business unit, our customers and where we’re trying to take this business from a customer standpoint, or do you want someone who understands the Boeing selling process and managing the Boeing part of the business? When it came down to it, all the other résumés were from career sales guys. And then there was me.
Share This Article With Others