Boeing’s 737 Max Will Return to a Devastated Aviation Industry

The first half of the year was not kind to the 737 Max. Boeing froze production of its beleaguered plane from January through much of May as customers cancelled hundreds of orders, and deals for hundreds more were put at risk by delays in the plane’s return to the skies and the coronavirus pandemic. But Boeing is back to work on the Max, and if it passes regulatory scrutiny, the plane could fly again as soon as the end of the year. When it does, it will return to an industry that was hammered by the coronavirus and faces a yearslong recovery. The Max crisis has already wrecked Boeing’s bottom line. In January, the company said it expected the grounding to cost more than $18b, which didn’t account for the ruinous effect the pandemic would have on airlines. In April, it announced plans to cut about 16,000 jobs, or a tenth of its work force, because of the pandemic’s impact. The aerospace manufacturer said this week that its customers had canceled 373 Max orders in the first six months of the year. Another 439 are considered at risk, including nearly 100 that Norwegian Air, a struggling low-cost carrier, recently said it no longer planned to buy. Boeing still has several thousand pending orders for the Max, but analysts expect that to shrink somewhat as more customers back out of deals. And even though the company plans to increase production of the jet and other 737 variants to 31 planes per month sometime next year, that is about half the rate Boeing had targeted before the Max was grounded. Story has more.<br/>