Even though the big storm around the 737 MAX seems to be dying down, Boeing still has some explaining to do to its customers about the controversial aircraft. Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, indicated that he will meet with the manufacturer in Seattle to get a clear idea of how many aircraft it will receive this year.
«We are concerned that Boeing is not meeting those deliveries. At the moment they are running late, there are problems with production in Seattle and we want to understand those problems,» O’Leary told a news conference quoted by Reuters.
«They say they can. We doubt their ability to deliver. We were supposed to take delivery of 21 aircraft before Christmas. Now they’re mumbling it could be 17 or 15. It’s hard to get hard data from Boeing,» he added.
O’Leary said Ryanair had agreed during discussions with Boeing last week to go to Seattle to establish when it would receive the 51 planes, which he said were needed to ensure continued growth next year.
The pandemic and the war in Ukraine complicated the manufacturer’s plans to increase the pace of production to catch up with pending aircraft deliveries. The shortage of raw materials for semiconductor production also has a major impact on production capacity.
These issues should tend to normalize during 2023, but at this point there is no guarantee. Customers, seeing an opportunity in the post covid recovery, need to increase their fleets. And the bottleneck is again the manufacturer.
