Paris (France) (AFP) – Boeing said Tuesday that it had secured a firm order from the leasing firm Aviation Capital Group for 50 of its 737 MAX jets, the company’s workhorse jet for the commercial airline industry. The contract comes as Boeing is scrambling to restore client confidence in the 737 MAX after two fatal crashes involving the jets in 2018 and 2019. Financial terms of the sale to ACG, a major leasing company, were not disclosed in a joint statement.
ACG, a subsidiary of Tokyo Century Corp. based in California, now has 121 737 MAXs on order. Its latest order is for 25 of the MAX 8 versions and 25 of the bigger MAX 10—a version that has not yet received full certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “ACG’s expanded order for the 737-10 reflects strong confidence in the airplane and its appeal to the lessor’s customers worldwide,” Boeing’s commercial chief Brad McMullen said in the statement.
Boeing was plunged into crisis after a MAX operated by Lion Air vanished from radars shortly after takeoff in October 2018 from Jakarta and crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people onboard. Less than five months later, in March 2019, another MAX crashed into a field minutes after takeoff from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. All 157 passengers and crew were killed. The successive disasters forced the grounding of the worldwide MAX fleet for 20 months as investigators probed defects in its flight control software, the MCAS anti-stall system.
Boeing is scheduled to announce its full-year deliveries for 2025 later Tuesday, a day after its main rival Airbus said that it delivered 793 commercial aircraft last year, a slight increase from the previous year. Both companies have struggled to return to pre-pandemic production levels as their entire network of suppliers was disrupted, even as airlines are eager to modernize fleets with more fuel-efficient aircraft and expand to meet an expected increase in passenger numbers over the coming decades.
© 2024 AFP
