Boeing production in 2024 expected to be less than half of rival Airbus
Boeing is expected to confirm it made less than half of the aircraft of its rival Airbus in 2024, with analysts questioning whether the troubled US planemaker will be able to increase its rate of production as planned.
The company is expected to report that it delivered only 340 aircraft to customers, when it publishes numbers on Tuesday, according to forecasts by Flight Plan. That is far below the 766 delivered by Airbus, Europe’s planemaking champion.
Boeing is hoping to ramp up deliveries of its bestselling 737 Max jet under the leadership of the
new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg
, who was appointed in July to lead the latest turnaround of the giant manufacturer.
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It comes after a difficult 2024 for Boeing, which started with a
door panel blowing out in mid-air
because four bolts were missing after repair work. The year ended with thecrash in the Korean city of Muan
of a Boeing 737-800 aircraft, killing all but two of the 181 people onboard. Investigators have not so far identified the reasons for the crash, although there are no indications yet that design flaws were to blame.Ortberg also had to deal with a workers’ strike lasting more than seven weeks that prevented the company from producing aircraft at its main factories near Seattle in Washington state.
The various troubles have meant that deliveries to airline customers have fallen well below the 528 it managed in 2023, let alone its record annual deliveries of 806 in 2018, before two fatal crashes of its 737 Max plane prompted its biggest crisis, before the Covid pandemic stopped most international travel for months.
Boeing is now seeking to increase production, with a reported target of producing 38 737 Max planes a month by May 2025, according to the Air Current, an industry publication.
However, aerospace experts have raised doubts over whether the company will be able to hit its targeted schedule, as the planemaker races to
coordinate its huge supply chain
to try to accelerate while satisfying regulators that it will not sacrifice safety.Analysts at Bernstein, led by Douglas Harned, said: “The 38/month rate estimate appears to have been one with high optimism. Boeing has not demonstrated that it is yet on the path to recovery,” they wrote, saying they do not expect the company to reach the 38-a-month rate until July, later than the May date initially planned. They also raised concerns with the lack of new managers in place with experience of ramping up production.
Matt Woodruff, an analyst at CreditSights, a rating agency, last month said Boeing’s rate increase was “likely unrealistic” but suggested the company was hoping to accelerate production more than expected by many investors.
While Boeing has been struggling, Airbus has not been able to fully capitalise because of its own problems in managing its supply chain. It narrowly missed its
target of 770 planes for the year – reduced in June
– while insisting it had come within its planned range of deliveries.Christian Scherer, the chief executive of Airbus’s commercial aeroplane business, on Thursday said the company had a “good year” despite dealing with a “difficult environment”.
He said: “We are not increasing production as far as our customers would like, and therefore as far as we would like.” However, Scherer said the company would beat its record annual production of 863 from 2019 in the “foreseeable future”.