By Joanna Plucinska

BERLIN (Reuters) – Boeing’s board is prepared to make decisions as the planemaker’s Chief Executive David Calhoun is set to step down at the end of the year, he told Reuters on Wednesday, adding that the decision on his successor is up to the board.

“The board is prepared to make their decisions, they have time to be able to make them,” Calhoun said on the sidelines of an aviation conference in Berlin, adding that he is committed to getting the company through its recovery.

Calhoun is set to step down by year-end as part of a broad management shakeup brought on by the planemaker’s sprawling safety crisis, exacerbated by a January mid-air panel blowout on a new 737 MAX plane.

Speculation has grown over his successor. Calhoun supports Stephanie Pope, the head of Boeing’s commercial division, while investors, analysts and others have called for a new top executive with both CEO and engineering experience.

Calhoun has been a Boeing board member since 2009, and was named CEO in 2020 to help turn the planemaker around following two fatal crashes involving the MAX, its strongest-selling jet.

However, the planemaker has lost market share to competitor Airbus, with its stock losing nearly 32% of its value this year as production of the MAX plummeted this spring. Following the January 5 incident, which occurred on a plane operated by Alaska Airlines, U.S. regulators have curbed the company’s production ceiling.

Boeing is also under renewed scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department, which is weighing whether to advance criminal charges against the company for violating a non-prosecution agreement stemming from the 2018 and 2019 crashes that killed nearly 350 people.

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, editing by Thomas Seythal and Chizu Nomiyama)