Former Boeing CEO and Seattle Mariners co-owner Frank Shrontz dies aged 92

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Frank Anderson Shrontz, the former chief executive officer and chairman of planemaker Boeing and part owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team, has died, the Mariners said in a statement on Saturday.

Shrontz joined Boeing in 1958 before taking a hiatus and then rejoined the company to later become its chief executive officer for a decade. He passed away on May 3 at the age of 92, the statement said.

Shrontz served in the Department of Defense in the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford administrations during his brief tenure outside company, including as assistant secretary of the Air Force, before rejoining the planemaker in 1977, according to a biography on Boeing's website.

He advocated for the mid-range Boeing 737 over the more fuel-efficient and longer-range 757 and 767 during the energy crisis of the 1970s. A Fortune magazine article described this decision as either "lucky or prescient," as the 737 later became one of Boeing's best-selling planes.

Shrontz led Boeing as CEO between 1986 and 1996, a period where Boeing more than doubled its revenues to $35 billion.

He became chairman of the board in January 1988 and then chairman emeritus on Feb. 1, 1997, following his retirement, according to his biography.

"We are deeply grateful to Frank Shrontz for his leadership and many years of service to the United States, the Puget Sound community and Boeing. Our thoughts are with his family," Boeing said in an email to Reuters.

The Mariners said Shrontz was a key member of the partnership group that took control of the Seattle Mariners in 1992.

"He was widely admired and respected in Seattle for both his community work and his leadership of the Boeing Company, and his national and international reputation helped legitimize the new group in the eyes of Major League Baseball," the Mariners said.

(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in New York, editing by Deepa Babington)