‘Humbled’ Boeing scores first new 737 Max orders since November
A Boeing 737 MAX sits outside the hangar during a media tour of the Boeing 737 MAX at the Boeing plant in Renton, Washington.
Matt Mills | Reuters
Boeing on Wednesday said it scored its first orders for its beleaguered 737 Max planes since November, selling two of them to a Polish charter airline with options to buy two more.
Enter Air, an all-Boeing airline, and Boeing also reached a settlement over the grounding of the 737 Max, which has been out of service worldwide since March 2019 after two crashes killed 346 people. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said it would include deferring deliveries.
“We are humbled by Enter Air’s commitment to the Boeing 737 family,” said Ihssane Mounir, Boeing’s senior vice president of commercial sales and marketing in a news release.
Enter Air’s orders for the Max aircraft won’t make much of a dent in Boeing’s troubles this year. Customers’ cancellations of aircraft have outpaced new sales for the past six months as airlines grapple with both the extended grounding of the Max planes and the coronavirus pandemic devastated air travel demand.
Through July, Boeing had net negative orders of 836 planes, including aircraft the company took out of its backlog.
Boeing shares were up 0.8% in afternoon trading but are down more than 47% so far this year.
