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By Scott Hamilton
Feb. 6, 2025, © Leeham News: Hope and skepticism for Boeing permeated the sidelines of a suppliers’ conference this week in the Seattle area as the big manufacturer struggles to regain footing following six years of back-to-back-to-back crises.
Boeing’s CEO Kelly Ortberg said on Jan. 28 that the company is on a path with the Federal Aviation Administration to achieve a production rate of 38/mo for the 737 MAX later this year. Afterward, rates would increase in increments of 5/mo every six months. At this rate, production won’t return to the pre-MAX grounding production of 52/mo until the fall of 2027.
But suppliers at the annual Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) conference this week interviewed on the sidelines think Boeing won’t hit rate 38 until late next year. If Boeing then could ramp up in increments of 5/mo thereafter, the pre-grounding production rate would be achieved in the fall of 2028, nine years after the MAX was grounded.
Suppliers think the ramp up rate is also optimistic.
Ihssane Mounir. Boeing photo.
But at the PNAA conference, Ihssane Mounir detailed Boeing’s new approach to the supply chain, safety and quality Boeing has adopted since the grounding and after the Jan. 5, 2024, accident involving a door plug separation from an Alaska Airlines 737-9 MAX. Mounir is the Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) senior vice president of Global Supply Chain & Fabrication.
The same suppliers who are skeptical of the ramp plans express hope and optimism of BCA’s plans to return to normalcy.
A few also expressed residual anger toward Boeing over the six years of lurching from one crisis to another that disrupted business.
One supplier noted that it received no tooling orders for years because of the disrupted production and the absence of a new airplane program.
