The announcement came on the same day that Boeing notified 6,770 workers that they were losing their jobs. Another 5,520 workers took up voluntary buyout offers.
Boeing had continued to build the Max, its best-selling jet plane, even after it grounded in March 2019 following two fatal accidents that killed 346 people. It produced more than 400 jets that it was unable to deliver before shutting down production in January due to persistent delays in obtaining flight clearance again.
The company temporarily stopped building the plane in January, before the Covid-19 pandemic reached most of the world's airlines. He couldn't afford to continue building the Max without being able to deliver the planes and close the sales. But if it kept the line closed, it risked losing suppliers who could go bankrupt without being able to sell their parts to Boeing.
"Without the supply chain, we won't have to assemble anything, so it's that simple," said Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun at the April annual meeting during the discussion on need to support the company's suppliers.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused air travel to plummet, airlines and aircraft rental companies have canceled orders for 299 of the 737 Max. Another 240 aircraft have had their order status changed and Boeing no longer considers them to be firm orders.
The company still has firm orders for more than 3,800 of the 737 Max in its books. And some of the airlines that have delayed delivery of the plane because of the number of planes they have parked say they hope to take delivery of the 737 Max someday soon.
"We still want to get the Max back into service," said Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest, to shareholders at the company's annual meeting earlier this month. "The Max plane is greater than [older versions of the] 737 that we currently operate. It consumes less fuel. It is an excellent aircraft. And certainly in this environment, we'd love to remove some of our older devices, avoid costly maintenance, and replace newer planes. "
Southwest has 34 planes on the ground, more than any other airline, and Boeing has built 25 more that it expects to deliver. However, South West has reached an agreement with Boeing to reduce the number of Max jets it will add to its fleet by the end of 2021.
Southwest originally planned to take delivery of 107,737 Boeing Max aircraft between 2019 and 2021, and 19 more from aircraft rental companies. But so far, it has only received three of these planes due to the grounding. Under an agreement with Boeing, it will now take delivery of more than 48 of these aircraft until the end of 2021 and will postpone orders for at least 59 more.
"We don't need the Max at the moment. We don't need all the planes we have," Kelly told investors in April during the airline's first quarterly operating loss in 11 years.
The airline said last month that it did not plan to use the planes on the ground until November at the earliest, and that it could push the use of the planes further.
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