Boeing only now resuming production a month after strike that idled two key plants
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More than 33,000 Boeing employees ended their strike a month ago. But planes have only just recently started moving along the assembly lines that were idled by the two-month work stoppage.
Production of its 737 Max jet finally resumed Friday, while Boeing said Tuesday that a second Washington state plant that builds 767 and 777 freighters will start back up "in the days ahead."
Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Whitaker said in an interview with NBC last week that Boeing had yet to restart production. The safety regulator has been taking a more active oversight role since a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max flight soon after takeoff in early January. The FAA then placed limits on how many of the Max jets Boeing could build. An initial investigation found the jet had left a Boeing factory without the four bolts needed to hold the door plug in place.
Testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board and a congressional hearing from Boeing whistleblowers have disclosed that employees felt pressured to speed production at the cost of safety and quality of the aircraft.
But, beyond the problems identified since the Alaska Airlines incident, the four-week delay in restarting production shows how serious the impact of the two-month strike has been. In addition to shutting production of most Boeing commercial jets, it also halted operations at many of its suppliers, who had to call laid-off employees back to work.
Picket signs outside the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington. The eight-week strike at the company ended when workers voted to accept a new four-year contract at Boeing on November 4.
M. Scott Brauer/Bloomberg/Getty Images
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Boeing got the easy part done. Now comes the tougher, existential problems
Boeing said it has used the four weeks since the end of the strike for "training and certifications, ensuring parts and tools are ready and completing work on airplanes in inventory to prepare to resume production at pre-stoppage rates."
But even those pre-stoppage rates won't be enough to return the company to profitability for the first time since 2018. It has cumulative core operating losses of $39.3 billion since two fatal crashes of 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people led to a 20-month grounding of the jet. The company has warned investors that it would see ongoing losses throughout next year, as well.
The company also announced Tuesday that it delivered 13 aircraft to customers in November. Deliveries are important because Boeing gets most of its revenue from customers at the time of delivery. Two of those jets were 787 Dreamliners built at its non-union plant in South Carolina that never went on strike. The other 11 were jets that were almost finished before the strike began on September 13, but weren't completed until just recently.
Boeing has delivered a total of 318 commercial planes this year. That's down 31% from the same period in 2023. It booked 427 gross orders so far this year, down more than 60% from the same period in 2023, when it recorded one of its best years for orders in its history, just before the Alaska Airlines incident resulted in new orders grinding to a near halt. For November, coming out of the strike, it booked 49 gross orders, although that was reduced by 14 cancellations.
