Boeing in Crisis Takes Off Again... Highest Deliveries in 18 Months

60 Aircraft Delivered Last Month
First Signs of Recovery After Fuselage Incident

After a series of recent accidents that put the company in crisis, U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing has managed to rebound in aircraft deliveries, putting itself back on a recovery track.

AP Yonhap News

On July 8 (local time), Boeing announced that it delivered 60 aircraft in June. This marks the highest monthly delivery total since December 2023. This is the first sign of recovery since a major production and delivery delay occurred after an incident in January last year, when an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 passenger jet lost a window and part of its fuselage while flying at an altitude of about 5,000 meters.

In the second quarter, Boeing delivered a total of 150 aircraft, achieving its best quarterly performance since 2018. This comes after the crash of a Lion Air 737 Max 8 in Indonesia in October 2018, which killed 189 people, and the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet of the same model in March 2019, which resulted in 157 fatalities.

Despite ongoing safety and reliability concerns regarding Boeing's flagship 737 Max model, the company is increasing production of this aircraft. Of the aircraft delivered in June, 42 were 737 Max jets, which were handed over to airlines including Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and United Airlines.

Boeing secured a total of 116 new orders in June, and as of the end of last month, its order backlog stood at 5,953 aircraft. Notably, Boeing delivered eight aircraft to Chinese airlines last month after the U.S. and China entered a trade war truce. In early April, when the Donald Trump administration sharply raised mutual tariffs on China, the trade war escalated, and Chinese airlines, following government directives, suspended deliveries of Boeing aircraft from mid-April that year.

In addition to a series of accidents, Boeing faced further challenges last September when about 33,000 factory workers went on strike for the first time in 16 years, shutting down plants for nearly two months. To overcome the crisis, Boeing appointed a new CEO with an engineering background in August last year.