Boeing's 737 Max crisis will stretch into next year
Ten eerste al het überhaupt vliegen.
Ten eerste al het überhaupt vliegen.
Ten tweede zal het de financiële positie van Boeing verder verslechteren.But even if only a software fix is needed, it will likely be months after that fix is submitted in September before the plane is granted approval to fly again by the FAA.
That means the earliest Boeing and airlines can hope to have the plane flying again will be sometime close to the end of the year.
"I don't know if I'd say it's best case scenario, but that's what's likely," said Jeffrey Guzzetti, a former director of the FAA's accident investigation division.
Je vraagt je af hoeveel, if anything, er nog over zal zijn van dat spaarpotje van 7,7 miljard aan het einde van de rit.But even once the plane is flying again, Boeing's problems aren't over. It has continued to build the 737 Max during the grounding, but it hasn't been able to deliver them to customers.
By the end of this year, Boeing will likely have about 400 built but undelivered Max jets in its inventory according to Cai von Rumohr, aerospace analyst with Cowen. But it won't be able to deliver those jets until after it fixes the planes already in the hands of airlines.
"Boeing's first priority will be to prepare the 381 planes in customers' fleets for service," he said in a note this week.
And it even once the deliveries start, it will take time to fix, test and deliver all those planes, said Jim Corridore, director of industrial equity research for CFRA Research. That means the delivery delay will likely stretch well into 2020. And Boeing doesn't get most of the cash from the sale of the plane until it's handed over to the customer.
"They're not going to clear out the supply in a month or two," he said.
That will only add to the compensation that Boeing will owe to airlines for the grounding and the delays in deliveries, as well as the cost of the repair and the certification process and any legal settlements with the families of victims of the crashes.
"We're definitely looking at figures in the billions," he said. "It's impossible to quantify it completely at this point."
Boeing also faces the prospect of an expanded probe, with the Seattle Times reporting Friday that federal prosecutors are looking into claims of subpar work at a South Carolina factory that makes Boeing 787 Dreamliners. A Boeing spokesperson told CNN: "We don't comment on legal matters."
Still, Boeing is in a far better position than most companies to ride out the crisis. It had $7.7 billion in cash on hand at the end of March. To preserve cash, the company has stopped repurchasing its shares.