10/04/2012

Boeing B737MAX orders gaining steam

This week Boeing firmed two orders for the B737MAX. On October 1st GOL signed for 75 B737MAX-8 and two days later GECAS for another 75 copies of the -8. Another unidentified customer signed for 22 B737MAX. Boeing has now 821 firm orders for the MAX.
What is maybe more important is that Boeing still has no order for the -7. Also the A319neo has only very few orders so far. There are two possible explanations for this:
1. Airlines are shifting to larger aircraft.
2. Other aircraft, especially the Bombardier CS300 is the better aircraft.
I discussed this also in an earlier post. Against the first assumption speaks that there are markets that do not support a 180 seater and a 150 or 130 seater is more economical.
But there are not really too much orders for the CSeries - yet. My guess is that once first flight happened (and went well) we will see some more orders, maybe also on a larger scale.

Another sidenote of the GECAS order is that there are "only" 10 orders for the B737-800NG included with 15 more options instead of the 25 firm orders originally announced. I also discussed this earlier: Boeing has to sell something like 500 more NG's to close the gap until the MAX enters service. And as a ramp up to full production will probably take another two years, Boeing needs to sell another 500 or so if they do not want to have an overall slowdown in B737 deliveries.