Boeing gets some good news with Indian order for 150 737 Max jets
By Diksha Madhok, CNN
New Delhi (CNN) — Boeing is getting some respite from what has been a month of terrible news.
India’s newest airline is purchasing 150 Boeing 737 Max aircraft, in the first major order the troubled planemaker has announced since the dramatic Alaska Airlines incident in which part of the fuselage of a 737 Max 9 fell off mid-flight.
Akasa Air has ordered the 737 Max 10 and 737 Max 8-200 aircraft to be delivered through 2032, the airline said at an event in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. The order does not include Max 9 planes, which have been grounded by US regulators since the in-flight blowout. Boeing said the order was finalized in December.
“The efficiency and versatility of the 737-10 and 737-8-200 will support Akasa Air’s expansion to meet soaring demand for air travel in the region for many years to come,” Stephanie Pope, Boeing’s chief operating officer, said in a statement on Thursday.
Earlier this month, an Alaska Airlines flight carrying 177 people made an emergency landing shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, after part of the wall of the new aircraft detached and left a gaping hole in the side of the plane.
It’s a huge new blow for the reputation of the 737 Max, which was grounded for 20 months after crashes in 2018 in Indonesia and early 2019 in Ethopia killed all 346 people on board the flights. Boeing’s (BA) shares have plunged almost 20% this month.
Analysts at Wells Fargo this week warned that the ongoing investigation into the Alaska Airlines incident will open “a whole new can of worms” for the aircraft manufacturer, which has been facing quality control and engineering problems for years.
On Wednesday, the US Federal Aviation Administration said it was expanding its probe to include Spirit AeroSystems (SPR), which builds the fuselage of the 737 Max 9.
In another high-profile embarrassment for Boeing this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was forced to change planes to return to Washington from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, after his modified Boeing 737 plane suffered what the traveling press was told was a critical failure related to an oxygen leak.
At the airshow in India, Vinay Dube, the founder and CEO of Akasa Air, said his airline pursues “the highest standards of safety in global aviation.”
“This large and historic aircraft order puts Akasa on a path of becoming one of the top 30 leading airlines in the world, by the turn of this decade,” he added.
Akasa Air, which was launched in 2022, is not the only Indian carrier that is buying a lot of Boeing planes. Last year, Air India said it would buy 220 Boeing planes. That order, one of the largest in Boeing’s history, was announced by President Joe Biden after a call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India’s aviation market is growing at a rapid pace, and Modi’s government believes it can become the world’s largest by 2047.
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