American Airlines Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft.
Nicolas Economou | NurPhoto | Getty Images
American Airlines is scaling back its plans to grow international flying next year because of lengthy delivery delays of Boeing‘s 787 Dreamliners, according to a company memo.
Deliveries of Boeing’s wide-body Dreamliners to customers have been paused for much of the past year as the manufacturer and federal regulators reviews a series of production flaws and needed fixes.
“This weekend we will load our summer 2022 long-haul schedule, but it will not have the growth we initially expected,” Vasu Raja, American’s chief revenue officer wrote in a memo to staff, which was reviewed by CNBC. “Boeing continues to be unable to deliver the 787s we have on order, including as many as 13 aircraft that were slated to be in our fleet by this winter. Without these widebodies, we simply won’t be able to fly as much internationally as we had planned next summer, or as we did in summer.”
“We deeply regret the impact to our customers as we work through the process to resume deliveries of new 787s,” Boeing said in a statement. “We will take the time needed to ensure conformance to our exacting specifications. While this has near-term impacts, we are confident this is the right approach to drive stability and first-time quality across our operations and position the program for the long term.
The FAA didn’t immediately comment. The memo was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
