The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Ripples from Boeing’s 737 Max troubles begin to spread
Acknowledging that it will take longer to get the 737 Max back in the air, Boeing plans to suspend production of its marquee jet next month in a decision that could ripple across the entire U.S. economy.
The company announced Monday that it would stop building the Max starting sometime in January, with no specific date for when the Renton, Washington, plant will be restarted.
The ramifications are likely to extend beyond the factory floor and across both the aviation and manufacturing sectors. The decision could affect the country’s trade balance.
“This is the country’s biggest single manufactured export product,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aircraft industry analyst at the Teal Group.
Southwest Airlines, which was counting on the Max to update its fleet, pushed back any hope of restoring the plane to service by five weeks, to April. American Airlines did the same last week.
Southwest said Tuesday that it is trying to minimize travel disruptions and apologized to customers for any inconvenience.
The Max is Boeing’s most important jet, but it has been grounded since March after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a total of 346 people. Investigators have found that flight-control software designed to stop an aerodynamic stall was a major factor in the crashes, and Boeing is updating the software to make it less aggressive. But regulators have yet to approve the changes.
The company said it will not lay off any of the factory’s 12,000 workers “at this time,” and many could be diverted to plants elsewhere in the Seattle region. Some could also be assigned to work on the 400 jets that Boeing has built since the Max was grounded in March but couldn’t be delivered.
The FAA told the company last week that it had unrealistic expectations for getting the plane back into service. Boeing has missed several estimates for the plane’s return date.
The agency has not given a specific date for approving the Max’s return, but FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson has said it will be done on the agency’s timetable, not Boeing’s.
The suspension of production will likely ripple through about 900 companies in the U.S. and around the world that supply parts for the Max. For instance, an aircraft parts maker that produces Max fuselages and already has dozens of them in storage is trying to figure out what to do next.
Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, which is the largest employer in the state’s largest city, said in a statement that it was working with customers to determine what Boeing’s announcement means.
“As decisions are made on how to best mitigate this additional impact, we will communicate any new information to employees and other stakeholders,” Spirit spokesman Keturah Austin said in an email.
He said the company makes 70% of the fuselages for the 737 and employs around 13,500 people in Wichita.