EVERETT – Boeing will start producing its 737 Max 10 jetliner at its Everett plant after expected certification of the plane from the Federal Aviation Administration in 2026, its top executive said.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg’s comments at a July 29 company earnings call offered a potential new timeline for when the largest variant of its 737 family of jets could start production in Everett.
The announcement marks the latest delay for the new 737 MAX 10 product line at the Everett plant.
In 2021, Boeing said it expected the 737 MAX 10 variant would be flying commercially in 2023. It said a new 737 MAX production line would be added in mid-2024 in Everett to complement the three existing production lines at the Renton factory.
But issues with the deicing system of the plane’s engine, which the FAA said could jeopardize the safety of passengers, has delayed certification of the 737 MAX 10 and the 737 MAX 7, the smallest version of the jetliner.
“We continue to mature the technical solutions for engine anti-ice and certification path for the 737 MAX family derivatives,” Ortberg said. “Work on the solution is taking longer than expected, and we now are expecting certification in 2026.”
The deicing issues also affect the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9, which are currently flying.
An FAA directive in August 2023 said that running the anti-icing system in dry air for more than five minutes on MAX 737 jets could cause the engine inlet to get too hot, allowing parts of the housing to come off and strike a window, causing a hazard to passengers in window seats.
The FAA also said that it could cause decompression of the aircraft.
Ortberg described the problem on the earnings call.
“We went through some testing, and this is a very delicate area that we’re dealing with around the inlet of the engines, and can it cause any perturbation to the airflow into the engines,” he said.
While the FAA declined to certify the newer variants of the plane, the 737 MAX 10 and MAX 7, until Boeing comes up with a fix, it is allowing the MAX 8 and 9 to continue to fly.
It ordered a pilot manual be amended to warn pilots to turn off the anti-icing system in dry air.
Ortberg said in the earnings call that the company had been working to solve the problem, but “the engineering design did not yield in the time frame that we were anticipating, and so we still have work to do.”
Certification by the FAA of the 737 MAX 10 would not allow Boeing by itself to begin production of the plane variant in Everett. Boeing must also convince the FAA to remove a production cap.
The Renton factory produced 38 planes a month, the limit set by the FAA, in April, May and June.
This cap came after a January 2024 incident in which a door plug fell off an Alaska Airlines jet mid-flight causing a rapid depressurization of the airplane after takeoff from Portland.
A subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that four bolts were missing from the door plug.
Ortberg stated on the earnings call that Boeing plans to ask the FAA to allow it to increase production of the 737 MAX to 42 jets a month.
When the 737-10 production line starts in Everett, it will require more time to finish a plane than in the Renton factory, he siad.
Ortberg said the 737-10 differs the most from other members of the 737 family and manufacturing will require more time.
“So it will naturally flow through the factory at a slower pace,” he said in response to a question from a stock analyst. “So by isolating or providing that fourth line in Everett, it will allow us to let the three lines in Renton flow faster.”
The 737 MAX 10 is 143 feet, 8 inches long — 66 inches longer than the Boeing MAX 9, the largest 737 MAX flying. The MAX 10 has a maximum seating capacity of 230 seats, compared to 220 for the MAX 9 and 210 for the MAX 8.
The Everett factory, the world’s largest by volume, has excess capacity because Boeing moved the production of its 787 plane to a new facility in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2021 and Boeing stopped production of the 747 in 2022.
More than 30,000 Boeing employees work on the Boeing Everett campus, which includes the factory and associated office buildings.
Boeing has experienced a series of trouble with its MAX 737 family of jets.
Airlines began flying the first variant of the then new MAX family, the 737-8 in 2017.
Two Boeing Max 8 jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.
Those crashes led to the grounding of the entire MAX fleet worldwide between March 2019 and December 2020.
Subsequent investigations focused on problems with an automated flight-control system that pushed the nose of the plane down based on faulty sensor readings.
Despite past problems, the Boeing 737 MAX will be a key driver of Boeing plan to improve its balance sheet, said Robert W. Baird & Company stock analyst Peter J. Arment in a July 29 report.
“The 737 program remains BA’s highest-margin program and remains a major part of growth in earnings and FCF,”(Free Cash Flow), he said.
Boeing said on its website that it has more than 4,500 back orders for the plane. A machinists strike last fall on top of earlier production halts after the crashes of the two Boeing 737 planes in 2018 and 2019 contributed to the delays.
During the second quarter Boeing financial call, the company reported a net loss of $612 million despite earning $22.7 billion in revenue in the quarter, a 35% increase from the same quarter a year earlier.
But Arment said Free Cash Flow, the money a company has beyond what it costs to sustain and grow a business, could grow to $10 billion as early as 2027, though more likely in 2028, based on Boeing producing 47 or more 737 jets a month in the future.
Boeing reported $900 million in free cash flow in the second quarter, but company officials said they expect it to grow to $3 billion by the end of 2025 as the company delivers a backlog of 737 jets to customers.
Randy Diamond: 425-339-3097; randy.diamond@heraldnet.com.
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