Is Boeing on Track to Surpass Airbus Production of Single-Aisle Jets?

By Paul Ausick Aug 25, 2014 9:10 am Updated Apr 27, 2020 11:53 pm

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Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) announced Monday morning that it has received an order for 80 of the company’s 737 single-aisle narrow-body jets and two of its 777-300ER dual-aisle wide-body passenger jets. The 737 order includes 50 of the new 737 MAX 8s and 30 of the current 737-800s. At list prices, the order is valued at $8.8 billion.

The buyer is BOC Aviation, a Singapore-based aircraft leasing company, and the order is the largest ever in the company’s 20-year history, according to the Boeing press release.

Through July, Boeing has unfilled orders for 1,376 737-800s and 2,159 737 MAXs. At the current production rate of 42 new aircraft per month, it would take Boeing about 14 years to fill all those orders. That is why the company is expected to lift its production rate beyond the 47 per month that it has already announced for 2017.

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According to industry analysts at Leeham, the global demand for single-aisle narrow-body jets like the 737 and the A320 from Airbus is about 100 per month. Boeing now delivers 42 a month and Airbus delivers 47 from its three plants in France, Germany and China. Airbus is building a plant in Alabama that is scheduled to open in 2016 with capacity for four planes a month initially, rising to eight eventually. The Tianjin plant in China currently produces four planes a month, but capacity could rise to eight there as well. If both the U.S. and Chinese plants run at full capacity, Airbus will be able to build 59 single-aisle planes a month by sometime in the next decade.

Boeing may announce by the end of this year that it will expand its capacity for building 737s to 52 with a long-range plan for up to 60 a month. According to Leeham, Boeing already reckons that it can build 52 planes a month by 2019.

If that happens, Boeing’s production would pass that of Airbus by the end of this decade. The company’s 737 plant in Renton, Wash., is capable of building 63 planes a month.

The sticky point for both Boeing and Airbus is their supply chain. Because both depend on hundreds of suppliers, capacity at the suppliers has to ramp up to match the aircraft makers production plans. And it all has to happen pretty much at the same time in order to avoid having inventory pile up somewhere while it dwindles somewhere else.

Boeing’s stock was up about 0.4% in Monday’s premarket trading, at $127.90 in a 52-week range of $102.57 to $144.57.

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