The budget airline is cutting flight capacity because of 737 Max woes
Boeing $BA is ruining Ryanair’s hot lass summer. The Irish budget airline told investors Friday that it will be making five million fewer flights than expected this fiscal year thanks to production delays with the 737 Max 8 plane, which is different from the 737 Max 9 plane that has been the source of so many recent headaches.
“Boeing now expect[s] to deliver just 40 of the 57 planned B737-MAX8200 aircraft that were due to be delivered to Ryanair before the end of June 2024,” the company said in a statement. “Ryanair’s current S24 schedule was based on receiving a minimum of 50 B737 aircraft.”
Not having those planes for the summer means Ryanair will be shorthanded for the busy summer travel season. The holdup is due to Boeing slowing down to beef up its safety practices amid the fallout from a January door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that caused an emergency landing.
Boeing recently broke from habit and withheld financial guidance for the fiscal year, telling shareholders that it doesn’t know what’s its business year will look like if dealing with these problems means it can’t build as many planes as it was previously expecting.
On Ryanair’s most recent earnings call, CEO Michael O’Leary went out of his way to sing Boeing’s praises, crooning that the manufacturer is still making great planes. “They always have, and they always will,” he said.
In a statement accompanying Friday’s release, which radiated disappointment, O’Leary maintained that “Boeing continues to have Ryanair’s wholehearted support as they work through these temporary challenges.”
O’Leary, who is holding out hope that Ryanair can scoop up 737 Max 9 planes that other carriers don’t want anymore, has a history of being let down by Boeing. Ironically, it was a previous Boeing crisis with the 737 Max 8 that had the Ryanair CEO cursing out his American aircraft supplier.
Three years ago, when two deadly crashes of that plane led to worldwide groundings, Ryanair also had to wait longer for delivery, telling Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun that he needed to “get his s—t together” and that his company needed “a boot in the arse” to speed things up.
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