Until just days ago, observers expected Boeing would use this year’s Paris air show to highlight its turnaround progress.
Then on 12 June a London-bound Air India 787-8 crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad, killing 241 of 242 people aboard.
Circumstances surrounding the incident remain unclear; the investigation has just started and the cause might ultimately prove wholly outside Boeing’s control.
Still, the crash has prompted Boeing to take a lower-key approach to this year’s Paris show, with its chief executive and the head of its commercial aircraft division deciding not to attend.
The incident could pose another long-term crisis for Boeing. Or not. The Indian Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s findings will be a deciding factor.
But barring the crash, Boeing had been making seemingly significant progress in pulling itself from a multi-year slump.
Boeing has seemed invigorated under new chief executive Kelly Ortberg. Of late, the company has landed a string of large orders, found an advocate in President Donald Trump, hiked 737 production, and been wrapping up rework on undelivered jets. Executives insist Trump’s tariffs will not significantly impact Boeing’s costs nor its ability to deliver the jets rolling off its lines with increased regularity.
That said, Boeing still has sizeable hurdles to clear outside of the Air India tragedy. It faces the challenge of acquiring and integrating Wichita’s Spirit AeroSystems – a deal set to close anytime soon – and of fixing its supplier’s manufacturing troubles.
Boeing must also bring its 737 Max 7, Max 10 and 777-9 programmes – all badly delayed – through certification. And it must formulate a long-term development strategy that ensures competitiveness into the 2030s.
Those challenges aside, recent positive news does leave a sense that Boeing might really have turned a page.
“We once compared Boeing’s performance to a Greek tragedy… with Herculean efforts required to restore its former American Titan status. But the narrative has changed,” says a 2 June report from BofA Securities research analyst Ron Epstein.
“Under Kelly’s leadership, we are more confident [Boeing] can break the doom loop,” it adds, citing positive steps including last year’s labour deal with machinists, a stream of recent orders, and the company’s safety and quality programmes.
A powerful suggestion of Boeing’s recovery came on 14 May, when, with president Trump and Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani looking on, Ortberg and Qatar Airways chief Badr Mohammed Al-Meer signed a major purchase deal. The airline ordered 120 787s and 30 777-9s with GE Aerospace engines, and took options to order a further 50 aircraft. The White House said Qatar Airways’ orders could be worth $96 billion and Boeing called it the largest deal by value in its history.
At that meeting, part of a whirlwind Middle East dealmaking tour by Trump, the US president heaped praise on Boeing.
“That’s a record, Kelly. That’s a congratulations to Boeing… Get those planes out there,” Trump beamed.
The day prior, while Trump was in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh lessor AviLease disclosed ordering 20 737 Max 8s and taking options for a further 10. And on 9 May, airline group IAG revealed it ordered 32 787-10s and took options for 10 more, for operation by British Airways.
“Boeing [has] emerged as the favoured trade tool for the Trump administration in recent trade deals,” said Epstein’s 2 June report.
Those deals followed Boeing’s major win in March of the contract to develop the US Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter, the F-47.
The wins do more than pad Boeing’s backlog and bolster its finances. They optically aligned the company with Trump’s pro-business agenda; Ortberg standing on the world stage with Trump, signing the Qatar Airways’ order, exuded a sense that “Boeing is back”.
Such positive momentum should not overshadow the fact that Boeing faces a long road back to full health following years of crisis upon crisis – the last being the January 2024 in-flight failure of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9’s mid-cabin door-plug, due to workers at the firm’s Renton factory failing to install bolts intended to hold the plug in place. Remarkably, no passengers or crew were injured in the terrifying incident.
But the event spurred another round of soul-searching and improvement pledges from Boeing, and prompted another slew of government inquiries that ultimately determined it had not, despite prior assurances, fixed longstanding safety and quality shortcomings. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responded by upping its oversight and prohibiting Boeing from producing more than 38 737s monthly.
Real change takes time, and in the 17 months since the door-plug incident Boeing has avoided major public setbacks. Meanwhile, its new CEO Ortberg, hired last year to succeed David Calhoun, seems to have steadied the ship.
Boeing has recently increased deliveries and production significantly, with executives saying they expect to be producing 38 737s monthly this year before hiking production, assuming FAA approval is gained, to 42 jets monthly. Boeing also aims this year to increase 787 production from five to seven monthly.
CUSTOMERS NOTICE
“Boeing has come a really long way over the last year. We’re really proud of their work and quality and their delivery plan,” United Airlines chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella said on 13 May. “The 737 has moved in the right direction… They’re delivering more 737s than we have counted on.”
Nocella added that the 787 programme’s recovery is less far along, saying, “We’re hoping at the end of this year and next year [that] we get the 787 programme fully back on track”.
As for Trump’s trade war, Boeing executives in April described its effects as minimal, noting the company sources some 80% of its materials from US suppliers. At that time, chief financial officer Brian West estimated new tariffs will cost Boeing, a $66.5 billion company last year, less than $500 million annually.
Boeing had in recent years been badly saddled by a huge inventory of undelivered 737 Max and 787s that, prior to delivery, required rework in so-called “shadow factories” to fix manufacturing errors. The company is finally wrapping up that work; this year it finished reworking 787s and it expects to close its 737 Max shadow factory around mid-year.
IN-HOUSE SPIRIT
Boeing has also been busy crafting an incredibly complex plan to acquire Spirit, its largest supplier – a plan the company has said will help it fix Spirit’s troubled 737 fuselage manufacturing work. The deal’s complexity stems from the involvement of Airbus and Bombardier, to which Spirit also supplies aerostructures.
The deal has been structured so that when Boeing acquires Spirit, Airbus will also take on the parts of the business related to its programmes. That package includes A350 fuselage work in North Carolina and St Nazaire in France; A320neo-family component manufacturing in Prestwick, Scotland; A220 wing and mid-fuselage production in Belfast; and A220 pylon work in Wichita.
Spirit has said it also seeks to sell its Bombardier work, which includes production of fuselages for Global and Challenger business jets in Belfast. If no buyer emerges, however, those programmes could land in Boeing’s hands.
While there is little doubt Boeing is moving in the right direction, much about its recovery and its long-term strategy – including what that strategy is – remains unknown.
The company must keep the Max 7, Max 10 and 777X certification programmes firmly on the rails. Those programmes are years behind schedule, and Boeing has since lost competitive ground to Airbus in the narrowbody space, especially at the top end of that segment due to the sales success of the A321neo and its LR and XLR variants. Boeing must also accelerate deliveries of aircraft already in its backlog.
But for those watching Boeing, few questions are more critical than the company’s plans and timing for its next new aircraft.
Boeing has publicly vacillated on the question for years. It had planned to develop a New Mid-market Airplane – something along the lines of a 757 replacement – until former CEO Calhoun torpedoed the project in 2020, turning Boeing’s full attention to fixing the 737 Max.
Boeing then partnered with NASA to develop X-66, a demonstrator of a truss-braced-wing airliner envisioned as being 25% more efficient than today’s models. But in April Boeing confirmed it was ditching X-66 development and shifting project staff to Boeing Commercial Airplanes, where they will assist with the more pressing work of bringing the Max 7, Max 10 and 777-9 through certification.
Boeing insists it will continue studying long, thin wings of the design due to be fitted to the X-66, albeit without the brace. But in giving up on the X-66, Boeing stepped away from the only development programme that offered a glimpse into what it might do next in the commercial aviation sphere. Analysts think the company needs to introduce a 737 replacement in the mid-2030s, leaving it little time to waste. A mid-market jet also remains an option.
“The big question is whether walking away from the X-66 is the same as walking away from new jetliner development,” says Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.
Boeing insists it has a plan, saying, “We can deliver value sooner by focusing on thin-wing design, which is applicable to multiple configurations and allows us to establish a sustainable and enduring capability to develop a pipeline of new-wing technologies.”
Many analysts think Boeing is wise to focus on its current problems before turning too much attention to the future.
Some customers agree.
On 30 April, Aengus Kelly, CEO of lessor AerCap, said he has no interest in hearing about new products from Airbus or Boeing until those companies fix their current troubles.
“Make sure the door doesn’t hit you on the way out” is how Kelly said he would respond to being pitched the next great aircraft. “Please don’t come in here and tell me you are going to have another swing. I want the stuff you’ve built to work better.”
