Boeing officially suspends production of the 737 MAX, and they don’t expect it to resume in the coming months.
Late last year, Boeing announced that it would temporarily suspend the production of its 737 MAX aircraft. Well, that time has come. The suspension is now official, as Boeing has stopped its assembly line in the United States.
The Boeing 737 MAX stops being manufactured while the company tries to deliver the ones already built to the airlines.
The began in March 2019 due to two fatal accidents that occurred due to the technical problems of the plane. Following this, new investigations were conducted on the aircraft, and more and more software failures and difficulties arose. The result? The Boeing 737 Max has been grounded since March. Boeing has so many parked airplanes that it has nowhere to store new planes. The airlines have begun using old airplanes to meet demand.
The impossibility of operating by the Boeing 737 MAX also implies that the company cannot deliver the newly manufactured aircraft to the airlines. As a result of this in the last months, the production was reduced to only 42 airplanes per month. But they continue to accumulate in the Boeing factories. So they have had to stop production indefinitely. Because they will not receive payment for the planes until they are delivered.
Boeing has announced that it will not lay off the workers who were in charge of manufacturing the Boeing 737 MAX, but will relocate them to other parts of the company. It is also a risk to lose these workers when the production of the plane resumes. However, this suspension of production also affects third parties, some Boeing suppliers such as Spirit AeroSystems laid off 2,800 employees a few weeks ago.
When will the Boeing 737 MAX reappear, and especially when it will return to fly is an unknown. Boeing estimates that at least until June or July this 2020, the 737 MAX will not return. But they must receive re-certification from regulators allowing the plane to fly again.
American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines have taken the Boeing 737 Max out of their fleets until June. Resulting in the daily cancelation of hundreds of flights. The estimated return date of the Boeing 737 Max is just that, an estimate.