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DannyB [soylentnews.org] writes:

Boeing customers cancel staggering 150 Max plane orders, deepening crisis as coronavirus roils air travel [cnbc.com]

• Boeing customers canceled 150 of its 737 Max planes in March, adding to the company's woes.
• The aircraft manufacturer has halted commercial aircraft production because of Covid-19.
• Aviation is among the hardest-hit industries by the pandemic.

Boeing [cnbc.com] customers canceled a staggering number of 737 Max orders last month, deepening the crisis the company faces amid the coronavirus pandemic and the continued grounding of its bestselling plane after two fatal crashes.

The Chicago-based manufacturer on Tuesday posted 150 cancellations of its beleaguered 737 Max jets in March, the most in decades, the company said. Brazilian airline Gol canceled 34 of the narrow-body planes and leasing firm Avolon scrapped orders for 75 of them, a move it announced earlier this month. Net cancellations in the month totaled 119 thanks to 31 orders for wide-body passenger planes and military aircraft.

That brought net orders Boeing removed from its order list in first three months of the year to 307 planes, a sharp turnaround for a company that just over a year ago was aiming to increase output of its planes to meet strong demand.

[ . . . . ] Boeing's airline customers are now facing the steepest drop in demand ever recorded because of Covid-19 and harsh measures like stay-at-home orders to slow its spread. The pandemic comes on top of the more than year-long grounding of the 737 Max after 346 people were killed in two crashes.

[ . . . . ] Boeing earlier this month suspended operations at a South Carolina plant where it makes 787 wide-body planes, effectively halting its commercial aircraft production after Seattle-area factories were shut down temporarily, because of the pandemic and government restrictions [ . . . ]

Alternate source: Yahoo finance [yahoo.com]

^{_<no-sarcasm>}
I wonder. If the 737 MAX had not been grounded, would those orders have been cancelled, despite the Covid-19 downturn in airline flights.
^{_{</no-sarcasm>}}

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