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Boeing delivered 24 commercial airplanes in April, the lowest number so far this year, as the company works through quality issues in the wake of the Alaska Airlines door plug blowout involving a 737 MAX jet.
MAX deliveries also hit a low for the year at 16.
The company has said it aims to ramp up production toward the end of the year. Boeing has delivered 83 MAX jets so far this year, down from 130 during the same period last year.
The company's backlog as of April 30 stood at 5,646, including 4,340 737s.
Boeing's shares were recently up about 1.5%.
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Plane maker can’t deliver enough 787 Dreamliners after sanctions disrupted production of heat exchangers
Boeing has more parts trouble, but this time it doesn’t stem from manufacturing snafus or the 737 jet. The blame goes to Russia sanctions still rippling through the jet maker’s supply chain.
In the opening days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a maker of a temperature-regulating part for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner ceased its Russian operations and shifted production west. At the time, Boeing was building so few of the jets that the supplier, RTX RTX 0.05%increase; green up pointing triangle, was able to keep up with demand.
But now the jet maker is trying to increase production of the wide-bodies, and RTX’s new factory lines in the U.S. and U.K. aren’t making enough.
“When the invasion happened, it got moved, and the capacity of that supplier has not kept pace with us,” Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said this past month.
In a demonstration of how relatively simple glitches can reverberate through a global supply chain, Boeing’s inability to secure enough heat exchangers, a critical but relatively basic part akin to a radiator, in part led it to warn investors that it won’t deliver as many of the Dreamliner jets as anticipated this year.
The slowdown will sap the company’s already strained cash flow, with fallout extending to airlines and the flying public.
American Airlines last week blamed Dreamliner delays in announcing moves to trim some international and long-haul routes this year and next. The airline, while not ending service to any destinations, will cut back on fall and winter flights on certain routes to Europe, South America and Hawaii and is ending some summer seasonal routes earlier than planned.
Heat exchangers pull in cool air from the outside to prevent overheating. Each plane has several, which are used on a number of systems. The heat exchangers affected by the shortage help regulate the temperature of electronics on the plane, and for its environmental control system, which runs air conditioning and cabin pressurization. Jet engines also rely on heat exchangers, but those components aren’t affected by the delays.
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Federal air-safety regulators have opened a new investigation into Boeing after the jet maker recently disclosed that its employees may have skipped some inspections on 787 Dreamliners and falsified records, the latest quality issue at the manufacturer. The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane maker notified the agency in April that it may not have completed required inspections on certain Dreamliners.
The inspections were related to so-called bonding and grounding aimed at reducing electrical hazards near the aircraft’s fuel tanks, people familiar with the matter said. Commercial jetliners have various safeguards to protect fuel tanks from lightning strikes or other issues. The FAA said it was investigating “whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records.” The agency has been scrutinizing Boeing’s production since the Jan. 5 midair blowout of a door plug on a 737 MAX jet flown by Alaska Airlines.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether any 787 Dreamliners currently flying passengers around the world would need to be pulled out of service for inspections. The agency said Boeing was reinspecting all 787s in production and must formulate a plan to address the in-service Dreamliner fleet.
About 450 Dreamliners could be affected, according to people familiar with the investigation. Boeing said in a securities filing it had delivered 1,110 of the aircraft as of last year.
Boeing shares closed 0.8% lower Monday, falling after The Wall Street Journal reported on the new FAA investigation. Broader U.S. stock indexes settled around 1% higher.
Boeing’s 787 program chief, Scott Stocker, in an April 29 internal message, said the company found no immediate problem for Dreamliners currently flying.
“Fortunately, our engineering team has assessed that this misconduct did not create an immediate safety of flight issue,” Stocker said in the message, which a Boeing spokeswoman provided to the Journal.
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The airline specified the agreement will defer the order scheduled to be delivered in the second quarter of 2025 through the end of 2026 to between 2030 and 2031. It said the agreement will improve its liquidity by about $340 million over the next two years.
Spirit noted the deferrals don’t include the direct-lease aircraft scheduled for delivery in that period, one each in the second and third quarter of 2025. It also said there are no changes to the aircraft on order with Airbus scheduled to be delivered in 2027 through 2029.
Spirit disclosed it intends to furlough about 260 pilots effective Sept. 1 as a result of grounded aircraft due to Pratt & Whitney GTF engine availability issues along with the 2025 and 2026 aircraft deferrals. As a result, it entered into a compensation agreement with Pratt & Whitney regarding the engines, which it estimates to improve its liquidity between $150 million and $200 million over the term of that agreement.
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