Boeing logged another month of zero 787 deliveries in December 2020, while also receiving cancellations for another 105 737 Max. On the bright side, during December Boeing resumed 737 Max deliveries and landed new orders for 90 jets, including 737 Max and widebody freighters. The December activity leaves Boeing at year-end with 4,223 jets in its backlog, down 22% since the end of 2019 due largely to cancellations and accounting adjustments stemming from the pandemic-shattered aviation industry. “Through the global pandemic, we took meaningful steps to adapt to our new market, transform our business and deliver for our commercial, defence, space and services customers in 2020,” Boeing chief financial officer Greg Smith says. “The resumption of 737 Max deliveries in December was a key milestone as we strengthen safety and quality across our enterprise.” The 4,223 jets remaining in Boeing’s backlog include 3,321 737s, eight 747s, 75 767s, 350 777s and 469 787s. In December, the company delivered 39 jets, including 27 737 Max, one 737NG-based P-8 surveillance aircraft and 11 widebodies. Customers that received Max in the month included American Airlines (10 jets), CIT Aerospace (four), Copa Airlines (one), Minsheng Financial Leasing (one), SMBC Aviation Capital (three) and United Airlines (eight). The 11 widebodies delivered in December included one 747F to UPS, three 767Fs to FedEx, one 767F to UPS, two 767-based KC-46 tankers to military customers, three 777Fs to Qatar Airways and one 777F to China Airlines, Boeing says.
Boeing’s lack of 787 deliveries in December reflects ongoing inspections of the widebodies to ensure the jets meet Boeing’s quality standards, the company says. Those inspections centre on 787 fuselages. Boeing received 90 new-aircraft orders in the final month of 2020. Those included 75 737 Max orders from UK discount carrier Ryanair, seven 737 Max from unidentified customers and eight 777Fs from DHL Express. But during December, Boeing’s customers cancelled orders for 107 jets, among them 105 737 Max and two 787s. The Max cancellations included 66 aircraft scrubbed by Aviation Capital Group, 21 cancelled by SMBC, seven nixed by CDB Aviation, six cut by Air Lease and five (including one Boeing Business Jet variant) cancelled by unidentified customers. The two December 787 order cancellations came from Boeing Capital, the company says. Boeing says the Max cancellations provide some benefit by helping it gain more flexibility with how it manages the programme backlog and delivery schedule, and by protecting values. In all of 2020, Boeing lost 655 orders to cancellations and conversions, among them 641 737 Max cancellations. It also removed another 555 jets from its backlog to align with accounting standards. Boeing still holds orders for those 555 jets but has less certainty that customers will take deliveries. Boeing took orders for 184 jets in 2020. But cancellations and accounting adjustments pushed its adjusted orders to negative 1,026 aircraft.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has appointed an accredited representative — alongside three other investigators — to participate in the Indonesia-led investigations of the 9 January crash of Sriwijaya Air flight SJ182. Joining the investigators in Jakarta will also be a team from the US Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing, as well as GE Aviation. “[The] team has expertise in operations, human performance, airplane structures and systems,” the NTSB adds in a series of tweets. The board is participating under ICAO Annex 13, which call for the country in which an accident occurs to lead the investigation, or pass them to another country. ICAO guidelines also call for officials from the country in which the crashed aircraft’s manufacturer is based to be involved. The NTSB’s involvement comes a day after Indonesian officials retrieved the flight-data recorder from the stricken Boeing 737-500, which crashed into the sea shortly after departing Jakarta. Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), which will be taking the lead in investigations, has suggested that the aircraft had been heading in an unexpected direction following take-off from Jakarta for Pontianak. Investigators have also disclosed that it was likely the aircraft was intact before it crashed into the sea. It has also been reported that the crew did not declare an emergency before the incident, nor did they report any issues with the aircraft before it crashed. Unverified data from flight tracking sites suggest that contact was lost roughly 4min after take-off, with the aircraft reaching a maximum altitude of 10,900ft before rapidly descending to just 250ft, when transponder contact was lost. Officials are now searching for the aircraft’s cockpit-voice recorder, along with other aircraft parts and bodies of the victims. Fifty passengers, six active crew and six additional crew members were on board the aircraft, a 24-year-old former Continental Airlines jet.

Spirit Airlines and Southwest Airlines have “serious competitive concerns” about the planned strategic partnership between JetBlue Airways and American Airlines. Miramar, Florida-based Spirit on 7 January filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation (DOT), asking the agency to take a closer look at the plan, and ensure there are no anti-competitive measures within it that should be prohibited. Southwest says in an 11 January letter to the DOT that it joins Spirit in these reservations about the venture. Spirit’s complaint was not immediately available. “Spirit’s complaint mirrors Southwest’s concerns about the partnership, which are especially acute at slot-controlled airports that both American and JetBlue serve, particularly Ronald Reagan Washington National airport (DCA) and New York La Guardia airport (LGA),” Dallas-based Southwest writes. “The competitive issues … are magnified by the fact that JetBlue acquired the great majority of its DCA and LGA slots via government-mandated slot divestitures based on JetBlue’s role as an independent low-cost carrier (LCC) that would exert competitive discipline against dominant legacy airlines at those airports.” The airline adds that if American and JetBlue begin to coordinate their services, this “would obviously no longer be considered an independent LCC providing competitive discipline to American or other legacy carriers”. In its own letter to the DOT, the National Air Carrier Association (NACA), which represents low-cost and cargo carriers including Spirit, Frontier AIrlines, Allegiant Air, Sun Country Airlines and Atlas Air, says on 8 January that it supports the concerns, and is requesting an investigation of the planned cooperation “to determine if implementation of these agreements would constitute an anticompetitive unfair method of competition that must be prohibited consistent with the public interest”. American and JetBlue announced the partnership last July, saying at the time they propose to operate codeshare flights and offer reciprocal frequent flier benefits, in order to better weather the coronavirus crisis. The joint venture would be focused on cities in the Northeast USA. In a letter to the DOT at that time, Southwest did not completely oppose the collaboration but said “certain aspects of the transaction raise potentially serious anticompetitive concerns that should be thoroughly investigated and remedied”. “For example, there have been media reports that the two carriers envision a much greater degree of cooperation and coordination than mere codesharing,” it adds. American, it maintains, dominates slots at the two major East Coast airports, and has an unfair advantage should it share its resources with JetBlue as part of the deal. The two airlines would together have 64% of slots at Reagan National, and 32% at LaGuardia, according to 2020 figures it quotes from the FAA. Southwest’s figures for the two airports were 9% and 5%, respectively.