Boeing Offloads Unclaimed MAX Jets as Air Travel Recovers

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 11, 2021 9:05 am ET | Andrew Tangel and Alison Sider

[BenLurkin]

A faster-than-expected recovery in domestic air travel is helping Boeing Co. find new homes for unclaimed 737 MAX jets whose buyers walked away or collapsed during the pandemic.

The Covid-19 vaccine-fueled travel rebound in the U.S. and some other parts of the world has left the Chicago-based plane maker with around 10 stored MAX aircraft needing buyers, people familiar with the matter said. Last July, it counted around 100.

While previous travel rebounds have been cut short by new waves of infections and restrictions, airline executives are more confident now that the recovery has begun in earnest and their finances have started to stabilize.

Carriers have responded by adding flights, making plans to bring back idled crew and hiring new pilots and flight attendants. They are also starting to expand their fleets.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Thankfully I don’t fly any more but if I did, I sure as he*l wouldn’t board a 737 MAX regardless how many assurances I got that the problems have been fixed.

[Yo-Yo]

There were a lot of smaller airlines around the world that went out of business, which is why Boeing had these unsold aircraft.

But there is still a 4,000+ backlog of orders for the 737 MAX, so they’re not going to go to waste.

[The Duke]

Same here. I’ll let other folks deal with air travel.

[catnipman]

“Thankfully I don’t fly any more but if I did, I sure as he*l wouldn’t board a 737 MAX regardless how many assurances I got that the problems have been fixed.”

the REAL problem is essentially unfixable: the plane can’t glide with total loss of power because the engines had to be mounted forward and high on the wings because Boeing didn’t want to use the higher landing gear required to properly mount the larger engines because that would essentially result in a new model that would require extensive testing, approval, new simulators, new manuals, and new training ...

[Dead Dog]

I’d load my family on the original max, as long as it was a Ethical operator. The root cause wasn’t the airplane but the priorities of the operators, and CCP owned media.