When Will Boeing's 737 Max Return? No One Knows
The planemaker is planning for a fourth-quarter return, but the financial pain gets significantly more acute should that timeline slip. And it might.
Still grounded … but for how long?
Photographer: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg
When will Boeing Co.’s 737 Max return to the skies? It’s anybody’s guess.
The aerospace giant said last week that it was planning for an early fourth-quarter return for the jet, giving investors hope that it had turned the corner on the crisis that’s engulfed the best-selling plane following two fatal crashes. But on Wednesday’s earnings call, executives threw out an alternative scenario: that timeline gets delayed and the cash flow and storage pinch is such that Boeing instead decides to temporarily halt production of the Max. Boeing noted that a more measured step-down in the production rate from the already reduced pace of 42 per month could disrupt supply-chain synchronization and the stability of the workforce, making a full-on halt more efficient in some cases. Still, this would be a dramatic action, with wide-reaching consequences not only for Boeing’s future earnings trajectory, but that of the entire aerospace industry.