People Category: Friday Aviation Sessions
Patrick "Pat" Schirmer
Pat Schirmer is vice president of Engineering Strategy & Operations for Boeing, a position he has held since December 2019. In this role, he has responsibility for major activities that integrate the company’s Engineering team, such as design practices and processes, deployment of model-based engineering, and talent management and strategic workforce planning.
Schirmer has held a variety of leadership roles during his 35-year Boeing career. Most recently, he was vice president of Engineering for Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ Fabrication and Airplane Programs organizations, where he oversaw the engineering teams supporting Fabrication, the 737, 747, 767, 777 and 787, including non-recurring product development efforts (737 MAX and 777X). In that role, he provided strategic direction to the Engineering function for use of common processes and tools and drove integration across programs, people and business units.
Prior to that, he served as vice president of Commercial Airplanes Customer Support, responsible for ensuring the health of the world’s largest fleet of commercial jetliners – more than 14,000 airplanes. He oversaw a complete set of technical resources that helped more than 800 operators maintain their fleets. Resources include service, maintenance and retrofit engineering assistance; round the clock technical support; field service; and maintenance publications.
Schirmer also led Customer Support Engineering, where he oversaw an operations center that provides 24/7 support to airplane customers around the globe, served as 737-900ER deputy program manager, and was fleet chief for the Next-Generation 737.
Schirmer first joined Boeing in the Missile System Division of the defense business, working on the Peacekeeper missile, Hard Mobile Launcher and Short Range Attack Missile as a dynamics and loads engineer.
A graduate of the University of Washington, Schirmer received a Master of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics as well as a Master of Business Administration participating in the Executive MBA program. In addition, Schirmer is a graduate from the Seattle University Executive Leadership Program.
Richard Aboulafia
Richard is Vice President of Analysis at Teal Group. He manages consulting projects in the commercial and military aircraft field and analyzes broader defense and aerospace trends. He has advised numerous aerospace companies, including most prime and many second- and third-tier contractors in the US, Europe and Asia. He also advises numerous financial institutions on aerospace market conditions.
Richard writes and edits Teal Group’s World Military and Civil Aircraft Briefing, a forecasting tool covering over 135 aircraft programs and markets. He also writes publicly about aviation and defense, with regular columns in Aviation Week and Space Technology and at Forbes.com. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, AIAA’s Aerospace America, the Financial Times, Professional Pilot, and other publications.
Frequently cited as an aviation industry authority by trade and news publications, Richard has appeared on numerous television news and radio programs including ABC, BBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, CBS, CNN, NBC, NPR and PBS. He has spoken at numerous conferences, and presents a yearly lecture to the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy Industry Study program.
Before he joined Teal Group in 1990, Richard analyzed the jet engine market at Jane’s Information Group. He has a Masters degree in War Studies from King’s College, University of London and a Bachelors degree from George Washington University.