The Boeing headquarters building is located in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. (Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images)
Aircraft and aerospace giant Boeing faces yet another potential corporate crisis after one of its 787 Dreamliner widebody jets, operated by Air India, plunged into a neighborhood and killed all but one passenger aboard.
While a nascent investigation hasn’t yet revealed the crash’s cause, the disaster is likely to prompt new questions from American lawmakers and regulators who’ve pilloried Boeing officials for years about their safety culture. The crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft and other non-fatal incidents led to massive upheaval within the company and ongoing legal fights with the federal government.
“Boeing must continue its work with the [Federal Aviation Administration] to bring safety and quality back fully to its production processes,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told the company’s new president and CEO, Kelly Ortberg, at a Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing in April — the most recent of a series of hearings focused on Boeing.
“You need to change the safety culture at Boeing,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) added.
Boeing, for its part, has been preparing for political confrontation with a multilayered approach that involves wooing lawmakers and lobbying regulators.
Government lobbying
In each full year since 2008, Boeing has spent at least $11.9 million on federal lobbying, making it one of the nation’s strongest lobbying forces among all corporations, unions, trade associations and special interest groups, according to federal records analyzed by OpenSecrets.
During the first three months of 2025, Boeing spent $2.6 million on a team of 60 federal-level lobbyists. They include more than two dozen who are employed by Boeing directly. So far this year, Boeing has also contracted with nine outside lobbying firms, including Crossroads Strategies, the Lugar Group, Squire Patton Boggs and the S-3 Group.
Among those contract Boeing lobbyists are a number of “revolvers” — people who worked in the federal government before moving to K Street, as the lobbying industry is collectively known. They include four former members of Congress: Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.), and Reps. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) and Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) as well as former executive branch staffers such as Jose Ceballos (Department of Transportation) and Nicole Nason (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration).
Through the first quarter of 2025, Boeing has lobbied more than 20 distinct agencies or elements of the federal government. They include the White House, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense.
Commercial aviation and safety rank high among the issues on which Boeing is lobbying this year. Specifically, the company has disclosed “safety culture,” “educating Congress on airline safety,” “FAA matters,” “commercial aviation certification,” “fire suppression,” “cockpit voice recorders” and “air traffic systems” among the various matters it’s discussing with federal officials.
But Boeing’s financial troubles — the company is still recovering from a weeks-long worker strike last year — could degrade its overall lobbying muscle throughout the year.
Gone from Boeing’s lobbying roster are several outside firms with which Boeing contracted in 2024, including Avoc LLC, a prominent firm led by lobbying powerhouses Steve Elmendorf and Jimmy Ryan. Also gone: The Gephardt Group, led by former Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), and Norm Dicks and Associates, led by former Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.).
In 2024, Boeing had 113 lobbyists working on its behalf, federal records analyzed by OpenSecrets indicate.
Boeing did not respond to OpenSecrets’ requests for comment.
But at the April hearing, Ortberg said his company is in the midst of “fundamental changes” to “restore trust and return the Boeing Company to the American manufacturer it used to be.”
Boeing, Ortberg said, has “made sweeping changes to the people, processes and overall structure of our company. While there’s still work ahead, these profound changes are underpinned by deep commitment from all of us to the safety of our products and services.”
Campaign contributions
Boeing has also maintained one of the nation’s most active corporate political action committees over the past two decades, spreading seven-figure totals among hundreds of federal candidates and other political committees each election cycle.
Boeing’s PAC is bipartisan in its giving. For example, senior Democratic Reps. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and James Clyburn of South Carolina each received $10,000 contributions, the legal maximum last election cycle, as did Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) and Rep. Tom Emmer (R) of Minnesota.
It also gives generously to national party committees such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; leadership PACs led by members of Congress, which are separate from their campaign committees; and a range of other party committees and PACs, such as the Republican Governors Association, Democratic Governors Association, Republican State Leadership Committee, Republican Party of California, Democratic Party of Virginia and Congressional Black Caucus PAC.
But since the 2012 election cycle, Boeing’s PAC has given more money to Republicans than Democrats, on balance.
During the 2024 election cycle, for example, Boeing’s PAC gave Republican candidates almost two dollars for every one dollar donated to Democrats, according to an OpenSecrets analysis of Federal Election Commission campaign finance data.
In all, Boeing’s PAC raised $5.4 million and spent $5.1 million during the 2024 election cycle.
Boeing’s PAC is generally funded by contributions from company executives and higher-ranking employees, FEC records indicate.
Money helps Boeing — or any company with financial largesse — buy itself connections with powerful people so it can put a positive spin on its operations, said Morris Pearl, chairman of Patriotic Millionaires, a watchdog group that advocates against big money in politics. That may include touting the jobs Boeing creates, the work it does for the U.S. military or the American competition it puts up against European competitor Airbus, he said.
“They work to get the most positive possible result as they can,” Pearl said of Boeing’s political influence operation. “It’s not like they’re bribing people. They’re getting access. They’re getting people seeing things from their point of view.”
He added: “You can become anyone’s best friend for a few tens of thousands of dollars.”
Trump inauguration funding
Boeing counts itself among numerous corporations, groups and individuals who made seven-figure donations to President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration festivities.
Boeing’s $1 million contribution to Trump’s inaugural entitled it to first-tier perks and access, including prime tickets to presidential balls and exclusive meet-and-greets with Trump and other incoming administration officials.
The roughly $251 million Trump raised for his 2025 inauguration celebration more than doubled the $107 million he raised for his first inaugural — until this year, the most expensive inauguration in U.S. history.
Boeing has a long history of contributing to presidential inaugurations regardless of who’s being inaugurated, having made $1 million donations to inaugurations for President Barack Obama in 2013, Trump in 2017 and President Joe Biden in 2021.
Because of inflation, a $1 million inauguration donation in 2025 is worth less than a $1 million 12 years ago.
Geography
In 2022, Boeing announced that it would move its global corporate headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, Va., just outside of Washington, D.C.
In practical terms, the shift means that top Boeing officials don’t need to board a plane — just a Metro train — for facetime with federal government officials.
Boeing, a major defense contractor as well as a civil aviation titan, joined several other top-tier defense contractors such as RTX, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman that also maintain headquarters in the D.C. metro area.
Dave Levinthal is a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist. He served as OpenSecrets’ editorial and communications director from 2009 to 2011.