Boeing charts ‘aggressive’ 737 Max production ramp-up in 2025

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Boeing’s supply chain wants the plane maker to be boring in 2025. Boeing has other ideas.

The U.S. plane maker on Dec. 17 announced it had completed a restart of its Washington state jetliner programs — its 737 Max in Renton and 767, 777F and 777X in Everett — following a 53-day work stoppage by its unionized machinists that ended on Nov. 5. Those 33,000 workers returned to work shortly after, but the company’s restarting of 737 production stretched to Dec. 6, as it prioritized training and recertification of the workforce in the meantime.

Now, the company is progressing with a steep production acceleration on its single-aisle 737 Max that will test its younger workforce, fragile supply base and its chief regulator in the year to come. Currently, Boeing aims to have its production lines building 737 Max jets fully transitioned to a rate of 38 per month in May 2025, according to multiple people familiar with Boeing’s planning inside the company and the supply chain.

While Boeing said it is approaching its restart and ramp up “methodically”, one senior official at a major Boeing supplier told The Air Current that the plane maker is at risk of repeating past mistakes — accelerating its factory tempo too quickly and pushing the deliveries from its supply chain beyond what the suppliers and their production lines can accommodate.

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Much of the pace in 2025 is expected to be guided by its engine partner, CFM International, and the Federal Aviation Administration, which sharply increased oversight of the plane maker after a January accident on Alaska Airlines. The post-strike restart is at least the third time in the 737 Max program since 2015 that the company has started final assembly on the aircraft from a standstill.

“That is incredibly aggressive, probably unrealistic,” said the supplier official. Underscoring the fragility of the trust between Boeing and its massive network of suppliers, the official said: “All I want is a year where they’ll do what they say they’ll do,” noting that the company’s production guidance for the supply chain has repeatedly failed to materialize since even before the 737 Max was grounded for 20 months starting in March 2019.

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