Borge Boeskov, the first president of Boeing Business Jets, has died at the age of 68. He is survived by his wife and three children. Boeskov retired from Boeing two years ago, having spent 37 years with the company.

Current BBJ president Lee Monson was one of the first to lead the tributes to Boeskov. He said: “Borge was a man with no airs and no graces. What you saw in public was very much the same as what you saw in private. He was a very genuine, upbeat man, who was also very caring.”

Boeskov’s first involvement with the BBJ programme came at the end of 1995, when he carried out research alongside Boeing’s engineering teams to determine the capabilities of the different models of next generation 737s.

After reporting back to Phil Condit the findings of his research, he asked that if the programme were to go ahead, he would be delighted to be fully involved.

Said Monson: “Like everything he did in life, he was passionate about the BBJ programme and due to his stature and also the foresight he had when dealing with customers, he was the main reason why the aeroplane became such a success.”

Very much a team player, Monson says Boeskov was always the first to share credit among the whole team when things were going well. Particularly when, after the official launch of the BBJ at NBAA in 1996, the company sold 25 BBJs in the first eighteen months.

“The thing I was most sorry about,” he said, “was that he and I had talked about getting to 100 aircraft during his life-time. We’ve sold 88 and there are 75 in service so we didn’t quite get there but we

came awfully close.”

Asked about Boeskov’s management style, Monson added: “He always carried a little bit of the maverick about him and instilled that in us. We were all well aware that we were doing something very much out of the norm in terms of what what the company was normally involved in. We weren’t breaking the rules but we certainly bent a few.”

Monson concluded: “I personally am indebted to the confidence he placed in me when he made the recommendation that I become his successor. I’ll never be a Borge Boeskov but I know I’m a better person for having had the opportunity to interact with him.”

Boeskov’s career spanned nearly 40 years. He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1965 and then went to work for Boeing in flight operations. He was marketing manager for the company’s 737 from 1974 until 1978 and left briefly in 1983 to work for Mitsubishi Aircraft in Texas as vice president of sales and marketing. He returned to Boeing in 1985 and became director of southern European sales and then vice president of international sales.

In 1994, Boeskov was named vice president of product strategy for commercial aeroplanes and in

the same year, Joe Clark, chief executive of Seattle-based Aviation Partners, first showed him the company’s blended winglets. The winglets were supplied to a 737 customer and produced a significant reduction in drag.

Boeing eventually formed a joint business venture with Aviation Partners to market and sell the winglets, which are now used on every BBJ as well as on many 737s.

Joe Clark said of Boeskov: “He was the Ronald Regan of our industry. Everybody liked Borge. He was the best salesman that Boeing ever had.”