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Boeing Delivered 24 737 MAX Jets in March as Its Factories Slowed

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Published: Monday, 22 April 2024 18:23

Boeing delivered 24 737 MAX jets in March, capping the airplane maker’s slowest start to the year since the pandemic.

Boeing has been turning out fewer planes since the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines door plug blowout. It is well below the goal it set before the accident of producing 48 737 MAXs a month.

The company has slowed its production lines to root out quality issues and amid heightened scrutiny by federal regulators.

Boeing has delivered 67 737s through the year’s first quarter, down from 112 for the same period a year ago. That’s the lowest number since the first three months of 2021, when it delivered 63.

Boeing has said it expects to pick up the pace of production later in the year.

The jet maker delivered 24 737 MAXs, up from 18 in February. It also delivered five 787 Dreamliners.

Boeing had a backlog of 5,668 planes, most of them 737s, at the end of March.

Boeing said it received orders for 113 planes and reported two order cancellations—both for 777 freighters.

Of the 737s delivered this year, 17 have gone to China. Boeing resumed deliveries to China in January after a four-year freeze following two MAX jet crashes in 2018 and 2019.

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Boeing Engineer Says Company Used Shortcuts to Fix 787 Jets

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Published: Tuesday, 16 April 2024 22:22

A veteran Boeing engineer has filed a complaint with federal regulators alleging the company dismissed quality and safety concerns during production of its troubled 787 Dreamliner jets.

Federal safety officials are investigating claims by the engineer, Sam Salehpour, that in 2021 he observed Boeing using shortcuts during the 787 assembly process that placed excessive stress on important joints and embedded drilling debris between joints on more than 1,000 planes. The errors, they say, reduce the plane’s lifespan and could be difficult to detect.

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Boeing Finds New Problem With 737 MAX Fuselages

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Published: Monday, 26 February 2024 16:40

Boeing is reworking 50 undelivered 737 MAX jets after a supplier’s employee recently found misdrilled holes on some fuselages, a new production snafu for the aircraft manufacturer.

Spirit AeroSystems, which has been at the center of quality issues affecting 737s, supplied the fuselages and it was one of its employees that flagged the issue. Shares of Spirit fell in Monday trading. It reports quarterly results Tuesday.

Boeing said that the issue could delay some deliveries in the near term and that existing 737s can keep flying.

“This is the only course of action given our commitment to deliver perfect airplanes every time,” Boeing’s commercial chief Stan Deal said in a memo to staff on Sunday.

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Alaska Airlines Plane Appears to Have Left Boeing Factory Without Critical Bolts

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Published: Monday, 19 February 2024 16:34

Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing’s BA 1.60%increase; green up pointing triangle factory.

Boeing and other industry officials increasingly believe the plane maker’s employees failed to put back the bolts when they reinstalled a 737 MAX 9 plug door after opening or removing it during production, according to people familiar with the matter.

The increasingly likely scenario, according to some of these people, is based partly on an apparent absence of markings on the Alaska door plug itself that would suggest bolts were in place when it blew off the jet around 16,000 feet over Oregon on Jan. 5.

They also pointed to paperwork and process lapses at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory related to the company’s work on the plug door.

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