How much of a difference will the addition of 75 more 737 MAX planes matter to jobs at Boeing’s Renton factory?
The expanded Ryanair order stacks up against the loss of more than 400 jet cancellations — which were mostly caused by the impact of coronavirus on the worlds’ airlines.
Despite the positive news for the Chicago-based Boeing, Ryanair's order expansion is less than one-quarter of what it would need to make up for Boeing's losses over the past few years.
Boeing's MAX was grounded for 20 months, after two separate fatal crashes of shortly just month's after the plane's debut.
Then in March, the entire airline industry took a hit as the coronavirus pandemic swept the world and halted most air traffic.
Boeing is still in the process of reducing 30,000 jobs companywide, though a combination of voluntary layoffs, forced layoffs and attrition.
The airplanes that Ryanair just ordered could be built years in the future, even as the MAX returns to the the air, and the pandemic fades into the rearview mirror.
Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary says based on the 210 orders now on the books — the 135 original orders plus the 75 new ones — his airline’s fleet could be one-third MAX planes in the next five years.
O’Leary said he’ll likely be back to order more for his 737-only airline.
The MAX is the commercial future of the 737. Except for the P-8 Poseidon planes for the U.S. Navy and other nations' militaries, all of Boeing’s 737 production consist of MAX jets.
Boeing will not say how many 737s it’s now building every month, only that it plans to reach 31 planes a month by early 2022.
It will only say that the 737 factory is at a low level of production.
Based on that alone the Ryanair order could cover a lot of months. But a single airline's planes are not built back-to-back in a stream.
Boeing operates by what it calls the “skyline” — a bar chart that shows how many planes it needs to build each month to keep up with orders, with some months looking taller than others.
While Boeing declined to release specifics, it’s clear some of those “buildings” just got a bit taller.