A Boeing 737 MAX 8 sits outside the hangar during a media tour of the Boeing 737 MAX on the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington.
Matt Mcknight | Reuters
Boeing‘s aircraft deliveries in October fell from a month earlier after a fuselage flaw in its bestselling 737 Maxes delayed handovers of latest planes.
Boeing delivered a complete of 35 planes in October, down from 51 in September. Of those, 22 were 737 Maxes.
The Virginia-based manufacturer’s industrial aircraft unit had told investors that the flaw would impact its delivery numbers for the month.
“We’ll recuperate on that quickly,” Stan Deal, chief executive of Boeing’s industrial airplane unit, said during an investor event last week. “We will surge and we’ll recuperate for our deliveries at the tip of the yr, but that adversarial quality which we have now to administer out of the system was an impact.”
Boeing is making about 31 of the 737s a month. Last week, it told investors that it expects to deliver between 400 and 450 of its 737s next yr, up from about 375 planes this yr.
The corporate logged orders for 122 of its 737 Max planes in October from carriers including Alaska Airlines and British Airways’ parent International Consolidated Airlines Group.
Supply chain problems and labor shortages have prevented the manufacturer from ramping production up further, a problem that has hit rival Airbus, too, just as travelers are returning in droves. JetBlue and United are among the many airlines which have complained about aircraft delivery delays.
Boeing last week laid out a recovery plan for investors and analysts that forecast a return to annual sales of around $100 billion by the center of this decade. CEO Dave Calhoun said the corporate could introduce a latest airplane, but not until the center of the following decade since advances in engine technology don’t yet warrant enough of a fuel cut to attract buyers.
The corporate has struggled since two deadly crashes of the 737 in 2018 and 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic, manufacturing flaws that paused handovers of its 787 Dreamliners, and problems in its defense unit, including delays and price overruns of the 2 747s which can be slated to eventually function Air Force One.