The line of airlines waiting on delayed Boeing planes is getting longer by the day. The latest company to enter the queue is Southwest Airlines, which informed investors Tuesday (pdf) that it will be “reevaluating all prior full year 2024 guidance” because it won’t be getting nearly as many aircraft as it had been expecting this year.
Citing “Boeing’s continued challenges,” Southwest said that it will be cutting its projected capacity growth by at least a full percentage point. Given that the company had been hoping (pdf) to increase its 170 billion seat-miles (one seat flown one mile, occupied or not) by 5%, that’s a big crimp. Those challenges stem from the increased scrutiny and slower production that have come in the wake of a January door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 flight.
Southwest had been expecting 79 planes from Boeing this year, but that number is now down to 46. Twelve of those missing jetliners are the 737 Max 8 models, whose delays are also forcing Ryanair to curtail its plans for the busy summer flight season. The rest are the 737 Max 7 model, which hasn’t even been certified to fly by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) yet.
The latter aircraft has been a Southwest question mark for some time, as the airline has noted in its regulatory filings for a while that Max 7 deliveries would depend on how quickly the FAA moves. Boeing had at one point requested a safety exemption in dealing with a de-icing issue, but it changed its mind after U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth wrote a scathing letter to the FAA asking the agency to reject Boeing’s “brazen request to cut corners in rushing yet another 737 MAX variant into service.”
No more uncertainty for Southwest: “the Company now assumes no 737-7 (‘-7’) aircraft deliveries and continues to assume no -7 aircraft are placed into service this year based on the current certification status.”