For the first time in decades, Boeing ended 2019 with negative airplane orders. By the end of 2019, Boeing lost orders for 87 airplanes – therefore they had more cancellations than new orders, as reported by CNBC.
The 737 Max crisis plays a big role in this – the 737 Max airplanes involved in two crashes that took the lives of 346 people in total. Boeing’s reputation has been hit severely by this scandal and it continues to impact their bottom line. The orders for the troubled airplane shrank by 183 planes; a big part of this had to do with low-cost airlines, including India’s Jet Airways and Vietnam’s VietJet, going bankrupt, however.
According to CNN, there was a 90% drop in 2019 for 737 models. Boeing barely had any firm orders for the 737 Max after the grounding back March last year; other models also suffered a 29% drop in new orders.
Boeing 737 Max is still prohibited to be flown and the two deadly crashes of the airplanes has been linked to be related to a piece of software that was installed on the 737 Max, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. Boeing is yet to get the software fix approved.