Boeing Rolls the Dice on China for Expanded 737 Max Output
The planemaker’s ambitious production target depends on a place where the jets still can’t fly — and there’s little indication of when that will change.
Boeing plans to start churning out 31 737 Max jets a month by early 2022.
Photographer: Mike Siegel/The Seattle Times/Bloomberg
China still hasn’t signed off on the return of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max. But the planemaker isn’t backing off its target for an aggressive step-up in production starting in early 2022. Does the company know something the rest of us don’t, or is it just foolhardy?
The Max returned to service late last year in the U.S., but China — which was the first country to ground the plane after its two fatal crashes — has given little official indication of when it might allow the embattled jet to fly again. With Chinese airlines still barred from accepting deliveries, Boeing handed over just 62 of the jets in the third quarter, slightly short of projections. It has cleared out only about a third of the 450 planes that piled up in its parking lots during the nearly two-year global grounding and the pandemic. But when the company reported its latest results on Wednesday, it reiterated a plan to start churning out 31 Max jets a month by early 2022, up from a pace of 19 now.