Yahoo Finance Ryanair summer holiday flights at risk from Boeing 737 Max delays
Ryanair is scrambling to understand the impact of fresh production delays for Boeing’s flagship 737 Max on its summer holiday schedule.
Europe’s biggest airline is scheduled to receive 24 of the aircraft between now and June ahead of a busy summer season.
Ryanair is planning to carry a record number of passengers - some 185 million - in the year to March 2024.
Michael O’Leary, the budget airline’s chief executive, has previously warned that passenger targets could be under threat if 737 Max deliveries in the first half of the 2023 calendar year were even 10 fewer than expected.
But Boeing announced overnight on Thursday that it has discovered production errors in making its popular but troubled planes.
Spirit AeroSystems, one of Boeing’s suppliers, was using a process to install fittings in the jets which did not comply with strict aviation regulations, the US firm said.
The production method “is not an immediate safety of flight issue” and will not affect jets already being flown, the plane-maker added.
A spokesman for Ryanair said: “This Boeing announcement does not affect Ryanair’s current fleet of 540 737 aircraft. We are assessing with Boeing how this will impact the 24 737 aircraft which are scheduled for delivery in the remainder of April, May and June.”
Boeing’s 737 Max and rival Airbus’s A320 single-aisle jets are the workhorses of cross-continental flight, carrying passengers between European and North American cities for work and holidays.
They have both been crucial in the nascent recovery of air travel after the pandemic. Any slowdown in production could hit airlines’ plans for expansion.
Boeing is also struggling to recover confidence in the 737 Max after two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 claimed the lives of 346 passengers and triggered a grounding of the craft. Faulty software was found to be the cause.
The company said it had told its regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, about the construction error, adding that it was “working to conduct inspections and replace the non-conforming fittings where necessary”.
The problem affects other craft in the 737 Max “family”, Boeing said, including the Max 7, Max 8 and Max 8200 planes, in addition to the P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft.
Spirit said it and Boeing would work towards a solution.
Smaller jets contribute the majority of sales at both Boeing and Airbus, with intercontinental jets with two aisles proving less popular among customers.
Although the 737 Max jets have now been signed off as safe by regulators, Boeing has been hit by supply chain problems and production delays. But airlines are keen to acquire the aircraft as it will cut carriers’ fuel costs and reduce emissions.
In February, it emerged Boeing would cut 2,000 office jobs in the US as the struggling planemaker battles to improve its stalling production line.
Roughly a third of the roles being cut will be outsourced to India, The Seattle Times reported, with the remainder disappearing completely.
Boeing said it will increase its overall workforce size by 10,000 this year, with a “focus on engineering and manufacturing” roles. The firm’s headcount grew by 15,000 last year.
