Boeing recently reached the 737 production-rate ceiling set by the Federal Aviation Administration by rolling 38 narrowbody jets off its Renton lines in May, marking a milestone as the US airframer distances itself from last year’s production disruptions.
Stephanie Pope, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), is gauging the unit’s progress based on its ability to safely repeat that monthly production rate, rather than on how quickly it can expand operations.
“I like to tell the team, ‘Let’s hit it for several months before we declare success,’” she told FlightGlobal earlier this month at the IATA annual general meeting in Delhi.
“After the work stoppage, we were very thoughtful and disciplined about how we turned the factories back on,” she says. “Now, that’s a multi-year plan, so we still have a lot of work to do.”
Pope says Boeing is well along in its recovery from the dual shocks of 2024, starting with the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 door-plug blow-out on a flight from Portland to Los Angeles. That incident grounded most of the global fleet of Max 9s for about a month and further shook confidence in Boeing’s 737 programme.
Then, a machinists’ strike shut down Boeing’s Pacific Northwest production activities – including work on 737, 767 and 777 aircraft – for a weeks-long period ending in early November.
Boeing’s production facilities in the Northwest came back online gradually once the parties signed a new four-year contract.
“We took an entire four weeks just to say, ‘OK, it’s a different workforce. Let’s get people recertified. Let’s get people retrained. Let’s make sure everybody is really comfortable.’ We started the factory again… and then we’ve just been very methodical, using the safety management system to drive the factory,” Pope says.
BCA’s immediate production plan is to stabilise at 38 monthly 737s and seven monthly 787s and “watch the metrics”.
“While we’ve been increasing our rate, all our quality metrics are improving, and our customers are seeing improvement in quality,” she says. “That, to me, is most important.”
Boeing plans to hold steady at that rate for “however many months until we feel comfortable, and then we’ll go to the FAA and present our process for approval to go above” the cap of 38 monthly narrowbodies.
Having engaged in a similar process with the FAA on 787 production, Pope says that Boeing has a “defined playbook” for pursuing increased 737 production rates when the time comes.
Boeing’s 737 production ramp-up plan calls for a boost to 42 aircraft monthly, with follow-on increases to come in five-aircraft increments. Pope declines to identify a target rate for 737 production by end-2026, insisting the company is in no rush to get ahead of itself.
“We’re really going to watch the health of the factory,” she says. “Obviously, when the system is healthy, we’re going to keep going up.”
Notably, Pope believes it is “not unrealistic” for Boeing to eventually return to its pre-Covid-19 production rate of 14 787s, with the widebody programme now based entirely in Charleston, South Carolina.
Boeing is operating three 737 production lines in Renton, and hopes to open next year a fourth line in Everett that will be largely dedicated to Max 10 production.
“We have the capacity to go up in rate, but it will really be based on how we’re performing and how the supply chain is performing,” Pope says. ”We’re not going to build a bunch of airplanes that are missing parts. We’re not going to do that again.”
Following Boeing’s recent mega-deals in the Middle East, including an order for up to 210 widebody jets from Qatar Airways, the Arlington, Virginia-based airframer could have a relatively quiet Paris air show in terms of new aircraft orders.
BCA is laser-focused on recovering its reliability as an aircraft supplier, and that will not change for “one week of the year” as the global aerospace industry descends on Le Bourget, Pope says.
During the show, the airframer will meet with airline customers to provide updates on commercial programmes, emphasising the company’s newfound stability rather than chasing more headline-grabbing deals.
“If we get a few orders along the way, that will be great for us,” Pope says. “But for us, demand is not the focus. We will announce orders when our customers want to announce orders.”
Similar to Boeing’s presence at last year’s Farnborough air show, the airframer will sit out of flying demonstrations over Le Bourget as it focuses on certification of the 737 Max 7, Max 10 and 777-9.
On static display will be the 777-300ER, F-15 Eagle, CH-47 Chinook, KC-46 Pegasus and P-8 Poseidon, while autonomous air taxi subsidiary Wisk Aero’s sixth-generation aircraft will also appear at the show.
Pope says Boeing is amid heavy flight testing of its 777-9, with all four test articles again airborne. It does not want to divert resources from those efforts, nor distract from its Max 7 and Max 10 certification programmes.
“What we didn’t want to do is take away from the flight-test execution to have airplanes at this show,” she says.
All four of Boeing’s 777-9 test aircraft have resumed flying after evidence of engine thrust-link cracking grounded the jets last year. Pope is confident the thrust-link issue has been fully addressed.
The 777-9 fleet has now logged more than 4,000h of test flying, including successful crosswind testing.
”July-August is when we’ll get through the bulk of the flight test, and then we’ll move on to take-off weight,” Pope says of the widebody programme. “The plan is to have most of the flight tests done by the end of the year.”
Tim Clark, chief executive of Emirates, expressed optimism at the IATA annual general meeting that his carrier would take delivery of its first 777-9s in late 2026 or the first quarter of 2027.
Meanwhile, Boeing is progressing with engine anti-ice system work that is pacing Max 7 and Max 10 certification. Testing is ongoing through partnerships with GE Aerospace and CFM International; finding a solution is taking “longer than anticipated”, Pope says.
BCA expects to wrap up testing and analysis of the engine anti-ice systems in July, at which point it will “update our customers on the path forward”.
”As we’ve said, if the timing were to shift, we don’t expect a material impact to our production plans,” Pope says. ”We could build other Max models for our customers.”
Boeing is still prioritising certification of the Max 7, the smallest variant in the 737 family, despite much stronger demand for the most-stretched Max 10 variant.
That is because the Max 7 is slightly closer to achieving certification than the Max 10 on a technical level, according to Pope.
“The majority of the work is done,” she says. “It’s all about engineering. Once we get the engine anti-ice solution… I expect you’ll see them close together.”
Boeing is also seeking an FAA exemption for a stall-management yaw damper system on the Max 7 and Max 10 that it says does not meet increased regulatory requirements, presenting another hurdle to certification.
Introduction of the Max 10 is considered critical to Boeing’s competition with the Airbus A321XLR, and for addressing Boeing’s eroding share of the global narrowbody market.
”We really do believe in our portfolio,” Pope says. ”I think the fact that we’re sold out almost seven years speaks to the strength of our market. The [Max 10] orders are really, really strong. We look forward to getting those certified.”
That significant backlog of orders is one reason Boeing executives believe the company’s focus should be on the present, rather than launching development of its next commercial aircraft platform.
“We don’t see the need to launch immediately,” she says. ”When you think about… market readiness, it’s financial strength and technology being advanced. Our focus right now is to get our airplanes certified, get really predictable, resilient production systems for our customers… and get our financial strength back in place.”
While China represents a relatively small slice of Boeing’s global market, the airframer has faced considerable uncertainty over whether it will be allowed to deliver aircraft to Chinese customers. As the USA and China ratcheted up a tariff war earlier this year, Chinese airlines stopped accepting delivery of new Boeing jets.
Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg then suggested that jets originally earmarked for delivery to China could be diverted to Air India, which holds unfilled orders for 140 737s and options for another 50 Boeing narrowbodies, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
But Beijing has reportedly since lifted its Boeing ban after China and the USA temporarily agreed to lesser tariff penalties. The sparring countries agreed to a new trade deal on 11 June, following two days of negotiations in London.
Though the situation is “dynamic”, Pope says, the undelivered jets again appear destined for China, where BCA is “preparing to resume deliveries this month”.
”We have customers in-country and we are working to get those airplanes delivered.”
Reporting for this story was completed prior to the 12 June Air India 787-8 crash near Ahmedabad.
