Bloomberg 'shoots': first Boeing 777X deliveries only in 2027. And Lufthansa slips (again) A340 and 747 recall
The news was in the air, because a few weeks ago the president of Emirates, Tim Clark, had mentioned it. And a few days [...]
Lufthansa
The news was in the air, because A few weeks ago, the president of Emirates, Tim Clark, had spoken about it..
In this article:
And a few days ago it was, if you will, made official by a Bloomberg report that the first delivery of the Boeing 777X to an airline will not take place until 2027. That is, one more year later than Boeing itself stated a few months ago and Seven years after the first flight of version 2.0 of the hugely popular Triple Seven.
The U.S. manufacturer's top management had signaled recently that the work to be done on the new plane was far from finished. In September, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference, had confessed that "a mountain of work remains to be done," speaking of the 777X program.
But at the same time he had reported how the certification process for the aircraft was now proceeding with as many as five airplanes in use and that no additional technical problems had been reported. Nevertheless, he had conceded in speaking with Business Insider, "we are clearly behind our plan to get certified by the FAA." Ortberg, however, had not raised the possibility of further postponing the plane's commercial debut to 2027.
Which he did instead Bloomberg (with no denial coming from Everett), that also did Boeing the pocket math on how much it will cost them to further postpone the first 777X deliveries by one year, viz. Between 2.5 and 4 billion (with a 'range' evidently tied to when in 2027 the situation actually unlocks).
Lufthansa, which will be the first carrier to receive the 777X between the dozen companies that ordered it, has already taken its countermeasures, announcing On the occasion of the shareholders' day To have postponed until no earlier than 2027 the retirement of its 16 Airbus A340-300s and 8 Boeing 747-400s.
During 2026, therefore, the only ones to leave the fleet will be the 6 remaining Airbus A340-600s.
A joy for fans of four-engine aircraft, a 'commodity' now increasingly rare in the skies at least as far as passenger operations are concerned. Less so for the management of the German carrier, for whom the delays of the 777X (and the consequences they have on the modernization of Germany's very 'aging' long-haul fleet) are now a veritable nightmare.
