Boeing deliveries rise as planemaker rebounds from years of crisis

The executives over at Boeing celebrated a huge victory on Wednesday. The airplane maker has had a lengthy laundry list of problems over the past couple of years — there was the workers’ strike, plane malfunctions, groundings, FAA restrictions, and a production backlog.

Most of those problems are now in the rear-view mirror; Boeing’s Q1 results released on Wednesday defied expectations. Revenue’s up 14% from last year. And the company is finally outperforming its biggest competitor, Airbus, for the first time since 2019.

For years now, Scott Hamilton, an aviation industry consultant with Leeham Company, kept thinking Boeing had finally stopped its downward spiral. “And then they stepped on their own foot again and did something else.”

Boeing’s downfall started with a merger in the ‘90s, he said, and its quality has suffered ever since. Hamilton said it’ll take years to fully fix, but now “Boeing is finally, finally, finally on an upward trajectory.”

There are two recent developments that have helped shape that trajectory, per Meghna Maharishi, airline reporter at the travel site Skift. First, she said that President Donald Trump has been a big Boeing salesman.

“A lot of the blockbuster orders that we've seen in the news that have come out, those are things that have been maybe announced at summits and events where Trump was at,” Maharishi said.

Second: It’s been two years since that fateful panel broke off a Boeing plane mid-flight. “They've also been just able to ramp up production of the 737 Max after the FAA had put limits on the production of that aircraft, which is their best-selling aircraft,” Maharishi said.

Now 737 Max production is back up, and the FAA said certifications for two new Boeing models are on track to happen later this year. But just as Boeing overcomes its old problems, it’s facing a new set of headwinds from the war in the Middle East. Those aren’t showing up in the first-quarter numbers, said Ryan Ewing, founder of the industry site AirlineGeeks.

“The airlines usually feel it first, and then manufacturers will feel it second,” he said.

The airlines are feeling the spiking fuel prices and canceled flights as ticket prices soar. “You're going to start seeing airlines pull back a little bit on what they're willing to go out and order,” Ewing said. “I think the other part of that is you might see airlines defer deliveries for airplanes.”

The war started two-thirds of the way through Boeing’s first quarter, so its effects likely won’t show up until next quarter.