Boeing suffers more cancelled orders for 737 Max plane

Plane-maker Boeing Company reported more cancellations for its 737 Max jet, which this week is scheduled to carry paying passengers for the first time since the planes were grounded 21 months ago after two deadly crashes.

Boeing said orders for 88 of the planes were cancelled in November, pushing the total to 536 for the year.

The company reported 27 orders for the plane, although 25 were a new order by Virgin Australia that replaced an earlier, larger order for 48 Max jets that was scrubbed, accounting for a majority of the month’s cancellations. The November figures don’t include Irish carrier Ryanair’s announcement last week that it will order 75 more Max jets.

Boeing said it delivered seven commercial jets during November, mostly cargo planes to UPS, FedEx, DHL and others, bringing total deliveries in 2020 to 118. European rival Airbus delivered 64 planes in November and 477 for the year.

An analyst for financial-services firm Cowen, Cai von Rumohr, called Boeing’s latest report on orders and deliveries “weak on both sides of the ball”.

The US Federal Aviation Administration issued an ungrounding order on November 18 that laid out required steps for airlines to resume using the plane, which was grounded in March 2019 after two crashes that killed 346 people.

On Wednesday, Brazilian airline Gol Airlines became the first in the world to return the planes to its active fleet, using a 737 Max 8 on a flight from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre, according to flightradar24.com.

The company’s own announcement didn’t specify the route of the flight. But customers would be able to exchange their tickets if they don’t want to fly on a 737 Max, a Gol spokesperson told The Associated Press in an email.

Gol, the only Brazilian company with the model in its fleet, is the country’s largest airline, with 36 million passengers annually.

The Boeing plane was grounded globally in March 2019, shortly after a 737 Max crashed in Ethiopia. A prior crash in Indonesia involving the model occurred in October 2018.

Brazil’s aviation regulator lifted its restrictions on the 737 Max in November, clearing the way for the plane to resume flights in Latin America’s biggest country. Similar restrictions have been lifted in the United States and Europe, where commercial flights with the plane are expected to resume soon.

“The Max is one of the most efficient aircraft in aviation history and the only one to undergo a complete recertification process,” Gol CEO Paulo Kakinoff, said in a statement earlier this week.

Boeing built about 450 Max jets during the grounding but was unable to deliver them to airlines — an important hitch because Boeing gets much of its cash from sales at delivery.

AP