Boeing hit by quality lapses, certification delays; Airbus soars to dominance
While Boeing’s leadership scrambled to contain its latest crisis — following the in-flight door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 — top executives at Airbus confidently laid out the rival’s success in 2023 and its dominance of the commercial airliner business.
The data on last year’s jet orders and deliveries released by both manufacturers shows Airbus was the world’s No. 1 airplane maker for the fifth straight year and pulling away from its U.S. competitor.
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Airbus delivered 735 commercial jets last year, compared to Boeing’s 528. And Airbus won almost 2,100 net orders, a new record, versus slightly over 1,300 for Boeing.
About 1,700 of those Airbus orders were for its wildly successful A320neo and A321neo jet family. That’s nearly twice the orders Boeing won for its competing 737 Max jets.
That data combined with the new sense of crisis at Boeing has produced a bleak outlook among observers of the company.
“I cannot see how Boeing can continue like this,” said longtime industry expert Adam Pilarski, of aviation consulting firm Avitas. “They are getting killed.”
In an interview, he said the Alaska Flight 1282 debacle was the last straw for him and many inside Boeing.
“Boeing has been outplayed for a number of years and it looks worse and worse,” he added. “There’s no great hope. There’s no new leadership.”
“There’s a high probability Dave Calhoun will not survive long as CEO,” Pilarski said Friday.
In the wake of the Alaska Airlines close call, Ron Epstein, an aerospace engineer and Bank of America equity analyst, also questioned the viability of Boeing’s current leadership.
“We would not be surprised to see regulators, investors and customers push for a turnover in the ranks of senior management and the Board of Directors,” Epstein wrote in a note to investors.
Sash Tusa, a lead aviation analyst with London-based research firm Agency Partners, said via email the stark and growing imbalance in favor of the European jetmaker in the 2023 performance data offers little hope of a Boeing recovery.
“Based upon orders and backlogs, it is incredibly hard, mathematically all but impossible, to see Boeing getting back to No. 1 again, absent a Max-type massive problem at Airbus,” Tusa wrote.
After the Max production setbacks last year, Boeing had hoped for a fresh start in 2024.
Things looked to be headed up toward the end of 2023, with big sales wins in November at the Dubai Air Show and 67 jet deliveries in December, the highest monthly total for the year.
But the hope for a turnaround has now been set way back.
The Alaska in-flight incident has grounded Max 9s, will inevitably slow future production, and could cause the FAA to delay certifying the final two Max models.
