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Ryanair has warned it will fly fewer passengers than planned next summer because of delivery delays from Boeing, as airline frustration at the crisis-hit manufacturer mounts.
The low-cost airline is Boeing’s largest customer in Europe and is scheduled to receive 30 Boeing 737 aircraft between March and June next year to help it meet ambitious growth targets.
“We won’t get all 30 aircraft; if we get 10, or 15 or 20 we will be doing well . . . We will make a decision on . . . slowing down growth for summer 2025,” chief executive Michael O’Leary said at an industry conference in Brussels on Wednesday.
Ryanair plans to increase passenger numbers from about 200mn this year to 300mn by 2034, but is relying on new deliveries of 737 aircraft from Boeing to achieve the numbers.
A strike by Boeing’s largest union has halted production at its main factories in Washington state, adding to a crisis sparked by the mid-flight blowout of a door panel on one of its planes in January.
Boeing outlined a $35bn plan on Tuesday to shore up its balance sheet, four days after it said it would cut 17,000 jobs and delay the first delivery of its 777X aircraft.
United Airlines chief executive Scott Kirby, on an earnings call on Wednesday, welcomed Boeing’s move to shore up its finances as “the right long-term decision”. The decision was a positive contrast with “decades” of “focus on short-term profitability and short-term stock prices”, he added.
However, airlines are growing increasingly frustrated at delays in receiving planes, which have exacerbated a global shortage of new aircraft. Boeing’s rival Airbus is also grappling with supply chain problems leading to delivery delays.
In response, many airlines are flying older and less efficient aircraft for longer than planned, or tapering their growth plans.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in our industry, to be honest. I have been around 30 years,” Lufthansa’s chief executive Carsten Spohr said at the Airlines for Europe conference.
Spohr said he expected the first delivery of Boeing’s long-haul 777X in 2026, five years later than planned. “We need it . . . I have hardly any old 777s,” he said.
Lavinia Lau, Cathay Pacific’s chief customer and commercial officer, called on Boeing to be “very open” with the airline about delays to the 777X.
“We haven’t understood. We haven’t been notified of the exact implications of the delay [such as] whether it is just the first couple of aircraft,” she said.
Emirates boss Sir Tim Clark said this week he had lost confidence in Boeing’s ability to “make any meaningful forecast of delivery dates”.
“Emirates has had to make significant and highly expensive amendments to our fleet programmes as a result of Boeing’s multiple contractual shortfalls and we will be having a serious conversation with them over the next couple of months,” he said.
But O’Leary remained confident Boeing could overcome its challenges and reliably deliver aircraft over the next decade. “At the moment it is short-term; it is frustration,” he said.
The global aircraft shortage is so severe that one company resorted to trying to buy planes from airlines during networking at an industry event in London this month, Etihad chief Antonoaldo Neves has said.
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