Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two companies with the largest number of B 737 Max 9s in their fleet, have canceled hundreds of flights after the FAA’s decision to ground 171, a grounding that costs millions of dollars every day in compensation.
The main supplier is Spirit AeroSystems
The expansion of the investigation to include Boeing’s suppliers opens the chapter on Spirit Aerosystems, the company born from a branch of Boeing in 2005 and listed on Wall Street the following year. With production sites in Wichita (Kansas) and Tusla (Oklahoma as well as Texas, North Carolina and Maine) it has around 8,500 employees and despite the separation from the manufacturer, Boeing has remained its main customer. The supply agreements include the Boeing 737, 747, 767, 777 and 787: for these programs it produces various products including fuselages, wings and wing components, as well as equipment. Despite trying to diversify customers, Boeing still accounted for 65% of Spirit’s commercial segment net revenue in 2022. A lawsuit is pending against the company in the Southern District Court of New York on charges of having hidden quality defects from investors. The court documents include statements from an employee criticizing the behavior of a manager who demoted him after he refused to underreport the number of defects discovered in Spirit products.
Spirit also counts Airbus among its customers for the A220 and A350 programmes. During a conference for the presentation of the results of orders and deliveries for 2023, CEO Guillaume Faury, answering a question about whether the pressure on deliveries could put the quality of the products at risk, said: «We will not deliver at the speed that some would like ». And on Spirit he limited himself to saying: «We monitor and work closely with our suppliers and therefore also with Spirit». Airbus grew in the years in which Boeing had to face the halt to the production of the Boeing 737 Max 8 after the two accidents in 2018 and 2019, also gaining ground on the stock market: in one year the Airbus stock gained 25 percent and Boeing the 10.2 percent. Since the beginning of the year, Boeing shares have lost 12 percent.
The repercussions of the accident
Although investigators have a clear understanding of what happened, it is still unclear why it happened. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating whether the door of the MAX 9 that blew up in flight was missing bolts or were improperly tightened, a problem found on at least 10 other planes. According to analysts, the incident could further delay the certification of the latest Max models, the Max 7 and Max 10 as well as have broader implications reaching all the way to the Chinese market. No Chinese airline has taken delivery of a new Max since it was grounded in 2019. Now this incident is unlikely to help Boeing in China where the Beijing government has yet to approve delivery of new Max planes for the country’s airlines .