Boeing Struggles With Aircraft Deliveries

Boeing has published deliveries across its commercial airplanes division for the third quarter, including September’s performance.

Across the quarter, the planemaker saw 116 deliveries, with the 737 family leading from the front with 92 of those numbers for this variant.

Meanwhile, Boeing shipped four 777 jets and six 767s, and its most popular widebody, the 787 Dreamliner, saw 14 total deliveries.

The latest quarterly performance shows that Boeing has delivered 291 commercial aircraft across the 2024 calendar year, with just three months remaining.

This number is substantially less than that of its rival, Airbus. However, it must be known that the American planemaker has had a far more challenging 2024 than its competitor through all its doings.

Since the beginning of the year, all plans for the calendar year have been derailed following a door blowout incident aboard an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX.

The Federal Aviation Administration has increased its oversight of production practices while barring increased production.

Therefore, Boeing’s inability to increase production as intended has resulted in its overall output levels collapsing to record lows.

The drop in output means that the planemaker has also been unable to meet the current backlog at the rate it’d ideally like.

As a result, airlines have grown increasingly frustrated with the planemakers and their inability to deliver their planes on time, which has ramifications for everything from market share to overall finances.

News of the Q3 deliveries also revealed that Boeing delivered some 33 aircraft in September, a seven-unit drop from August.

While the September rate was up on its 2023 performance in the same month, October is painted to be bleak as strike action continues and output is slashed even further.

That strike impacts some of Boeing’s leading aircraft programmes, such as the MAX, 767, and even the 777. Boeing has experienced one difficulty after another, and looking ahead, it hopes 2025 is smoother.

The first port of call will be returning to the table with the unions representing over 30,000 employees to sort out contracts. Once this is sorted, Boeing can, at the very least, focus on rebuilding itself as a business.