Erdogan keeps Boeing afloat: Turkey's low-cost Pegasus Airlines orders 200 examples of its 'ghost plane'
There are two 'ghosts' of the skies. Two models that are little talked about, because Boeing has an interest that if [...]
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Turkey
There are two 'ghosts' of the skies. Two models about which little is being talked about, because Boeing has an interest in them being talked about as little as possible, unlike the Boeing 777X.
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These are the smaller version and the larger version of the Boeing 737 MAX. An aircraft that has seen more than Bertoldo since it entered service in May 2017. More than seven and a half years since that first time (with Indonesia's Malindo Air) only two of the four versions of the MAX ply the skies around the world every day: the MAX 8 and MAX 9.
Not that these have not faced dramatic moments, such as the crash of Ethiopian Airlines' and Lion Air's two MAX 8s and the In-flight loss of an airlock by an Alaska Airlines MAX 9.. But the other two versions, the MAX 7 and MAX 10, have yet to see a single passenger on board, despite having made their first flights on March 16, 2018 and June 18, 2021, respectively.
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It is obvious that their market, initially hot, has over time cooled, if not frozen. Would you, in fact, order an airplane that you do not know when it will be delivered? No. Instead, Turkey's low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines (which is based at Istanbul's second largest airport, Sabiha Gokcen International Airport) has just ordered 100, of MAX 10, with options for another 100. Giving a Formidable breath of fresh air at Boeing, which after the travails of recent years is now discounting the effects on production of nearly three months of strikes by workers at its plants in Washington state, including the one in Renton where final assembly of the 737s takes place.
The -10 is the largest of the MAXs: in fact, it can carry up to 230 passengers (in a single class, as Pegasus's are supposed to be.) Over distances up to 3,100 nautical miles, or 5,740km. Performance that, given a similar capacity, sees the MAX 10 succumb as far as range is concerned to both the Airbus A321-LR (which can fly nonstop for 4,000 nautical miles or 7,400km) and the A321-XLR, which comes in at 4,700 nautical miles or 8,700km.
The joint statement from Boeing and Pegasus announcing the order nothing says about delivery dates (obviously) and value of the order. But you can bet that Pegasus got a 'bargain' for ordering so many examples of an airplane that has been flying for three and a half years without yet being certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.
And it's not crazy to think that politics is behind this order: Erdogan could not suffer the Biden administration and the Democrats and, perhaps, it is no accident that an order of such a magnitude from a Turkish company to an American company is a beau geste towards the Trump administration that is about to take over the reins of the United States.
Also because Pegasus, which had initially built its fleet on Boeing 737s (from 'classic' to the -800s), had then changed direction, ending up with, today, a fleet consisting of 109 Airbus A320s and A321s compared with just nine 737s. Now, the 'return' to U.S.-made aircraft.
