Wall Street analysts cut 737 MAX delivery forecast

Boeing is now unlikely to deliver more than 500 of its 737 MAX planes to customers this year, and even that will depend on a swift removal of an effective halt in deliveries after June, Wall Street analysts said Monday. Deliveries of Boeing's best-selling aircraft have been frozen by a global grounding of the jet following the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight on March 10, which killed all 157 people onboard. The company's delivery numbers for March are due to be published on Tuesday and are expected to show customers took less than half of a previous consensus estimate of 46 planes as the groundings prevented flights. An estimate for March last week from another brokerage, Baird, was as low as 19 planes. Yet Wall Street has been slow to draw conclusions about what that means for how many 737 MAX aircraft Boeing will deliver to customers this year and how many it will have to keep on its own books-even after announcing on Friday it will cut production by 10 planes a month or roughly 20%. Of five well-known brokerages that produce estimates for Boeing's full-year numbers, Cowen and Jefferies cut their 2019 delivery forecast following Boeing's decision to lower production. Cowen now expects full-year deliveries of "around 500", down from its earlier forecast of 630 737 MAX jets. Jefferies expects Boeing to deliver 497 737 MAX planes, down from 580.<br/>