No such problems at Airbus, which cruised at a high level and shipped almost two planes a day last year
Beleaguered aerospace outfit Boeing has revealed how many commercial aircraft it shipped in 2024, and the news isn't good.
The company on Tuesday reevaled it sent 348 aircraft down the runway last year, 265 of them 737s in addition to 18 767s, 14 777s, and 51 787s.
Buidling an aircraft almost every day sounds like quite the achievement, given the complexity of a modern airliner and the long supply chains required to make them.
Airbus does have one advantage in that it counts the A220 regional jet in its total, having acquired its originator - Canadian firm Bombardier - in 2020. But A220 production isn't enormous, with 68 built in 2023 and 75 last year. Even if Airbus excluded the A220, it would still have flown higher than Boeing.
The France-based plane-maker's biggest seller remains the A320 family, 602 of which took to the skies for the first time last year. 32 widebody A330s and 57 A350s joined them. Airbus also has a new hit on its hands in the form of the A321XLR variant that gives the single-aisle workhorse the range to comfortably tackle trans-Atlantic flights.
Boeing's commercial plane production slowdown is attributable to industrial action and safety concerns that have seen it revisit practices and procedures to ensure it doesn't do things like deliver planes that are missing bolts that hold doors in place or write software that can make planes crash.
The company's other offerings also have problems. Exhibit A is the Starliner space capsule that is designed to carry astronauts to orbit and back again, but which in June 2024 made it into space after years of delays but was then rated too dangerous to make the return journey with a crew aboard. Hitch-hiking or summoning an Uber are not options in space, so the pair of 'nauts who rode Starliner to the International Space station now face many months in orbit while they wait for a ride home.
Boeing appointed a new CEO, aviation veteran Kelly Ortberg, to help it straighten up and fly right. He's promised to restore the company's culture and regain a leadership position. That effort has struggled to achieve escape velocity thanks to the recent crash of a 737 in South Korea that, while not attributed to a Boeing failure, has kept bad news about Boeing in the headlines.
Ortberg now knows he's running a company that made 418 fewer commercial aircraft than its main rival last year, meaning leadership is a long way off on the manufacturing scoreboard never mind any assessment of technical prowess. ®