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Boeing’s airplane deliveries are the highest in 7 years. Now it’s about to pick up the pace
A Boeing Co. 737 Max airplane at the company’s manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington, US, on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Boeing is set to report this week that it delivered the most airplanes since 2018 last year after it stabilized its production, the clearest sign of a turnaround yet after years of safety crises and snowballing quality defects.
Now, the aerospace giant is planning to ramp up production.
“It’s a long road back from a … shall we say, a rather dysfunctional culture, but they’re making big progress,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, an aerospace industry consulting firm.
Boeing was forced to scale back production in recent years following two fatal crashes of its popular 737 Max aircraft in 2018 and 2019 and a midair blowout of a door plug from one of its planes in the first week of 2024. The Covid pandemic snarled airplane assembly at both Boeing and its chief rival, Airbus, with supply chain delays and loss of experienced workers, even after the worst of the health crisis subsided.
A Boeing 737 approaches San Diego International for a landing, May 10, 2025.
Kevin Carter | Getty Images
Boeing’s leaders, including CEO Kelly Ortberg — a longtime aerospace executive who came out of retirement to take the top job months after the midair door plug accident — are gearing up to increase production this year of its cash cow 737 Max aircraft and the longer-range 787 Dreamliners.
That could help the manufacturer, the top U.S. exporter by value, return to profitability, as analysts expect this year, territory that was out of reach for seven years as its leaders focused on damage control and were stuck reassuring frustrated airline executives who were awaiting late planes.
Their tone has changed as Boeing has become more predictable and increased production, with the Federal Aviation Administration’s blessing. In a sign of the FAA’s increased confidence in Boeing, the agency in September said Boeing could issue its own air worthiness certificates before customers receive some of its 737s and 787s after years of restrictions.
Boeing’s commercial aircraft business is its largest unit, accounting for about 46% of sales in the first nine months of last year, with the rest coming from its defense and services business. Boeing last reported a full-year profit in 2018.
Investors are optimistic for further improvement. Boeing shares have gained 36% over the last 12 months, outpacing the S&P 500‘s nearly 20% advance.
“Boeing is definitely better and more stable,” said Bob Jordan, CEO of all-Boeing airline Southwest Airlines, in an interview Dec. 10.
The company is scheduled to outline its production plans for 2026 later this month when it reports quarterly results on Jan. 27.
Getting into gear
For Boeing, the recent turnaround has taken place largely on the assembly floor.
Under Ortberg, the manufacturer has slashed so-called traveled work, in which assembly tasks are done out of order, to avoid costly mistakes. The company has made other manufacturing changes, as well, including added training.
The National Transportation Safety Board in June said inadequate training and management oversight had been among the problems at the company, according to its investigation into what led to the door plug blowout in January 2024.
On Dec. 8, Boeing also completed its acquisition of fuselage maker Spirit AeroSystems, which Boeing had spun out of the company two decades ago. It now has more direct control of the crucial supplier.
Moving out jets
Boeing handed over 537 aircraft in the first 11 months of last year. It reports December deliveries on Tuesday, but Jefferies estimates the company delivered 61 commercial jets last month, 44 of them Boeing’s bestseller, the 737 Max.
Boeing delivered 348 aircraft in 2024 and 528 in 2023. Last year’s total would still be far off the 806 airplanes it handed over in 2018.
Last October, the FAA raised its production cap on Boeing’s 737 Max from 38 a month to 42. (The FAA required its sign-off after the door plug accident.) CFO Jay Malave said at a UBS conference on Dec. 2 that he expects the company to get to that rate in early 2026. Ortberg told investors in October that further rate increases are on the table, in increments of five planes.
Kelly Ortberg, chief executive officer of Boeing Co., during a media event at the Boeing Delivery Center in Seattle, Washington, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026.
M. Scott Brauer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Handovers to airlines in 2026 will likely be new production, compared with clearing out older inventory, Malave had said. Boeing is also likely to produce about eight Dreamliners a month as of early this year, he added.
Deliveries are key for airplane makers, because airlines and other customers pay the bulk of an airplane’s price when they receive the aircraft. Boeing’s chief competitor, Airbus, is scheduled to report 2025 orders and deliveries on Monday.
Still, several planes that were expected to already flying passengers aren’t certified yet, including the Boeing 777X as well as the Max 7 and Max 10 variants, depriving Boeing of cash and driving up costs.
Southwest is awaiting the delayed Max 7, the smallest plane of the Max family. The model is important for airline routes that have lower demand so airlines can avoid oversupplying the market with seats, pushing down fares.
Southwest CEO Jordan last month said that he doesn’t expect the airline to fly the Max 7 before the first half of 2027 as Boeing certification work continues. Boeing at one point expected it to enter service in 2019.
“They’re still very short in terms of delivering the aircraft that we need, but I’m glad to see the progress on the Max 7,” Jordan told CNBC.
Robust demand
Orders for both Boeing and Airbus jets look solid, with demand set to continue outstripping supply into the next decade, Bernstein aerospace analyst Douglas Harned said in a note last week.
Airbus outpaced Boeing in deliveries last year, though Boeing appears to have outsold its European competitor in new orders.
Through November, Boeing logged 1,000 gross orders compared with 797 from Airbus. Airline customers have started to look beyond this decade, snagging delivery slots into the mid-2030s as they plot out growth and international expansions.
On Wednesday, Alaska Airlines said it is ordering 105 Boeing 737 Max 10 jets, the longest aircraft of the Max group. Alaska fleet chief Shane Jones told CNBC the order is a sign of “our confidence in the Max 10 certification” as well as “our confidence in Boeing and their turnaround and their ability to produce quality aircraft on time.”
Alaska also exercised options for five 787 Dreamliners for more international routes just over a year after it acquired Hawaiian Airlines — a combination that handed Alaska more Dreamliners and Airbus A330s to reach for destinations that it couldn’t get to before, like Japan, South Korea and Italy.
The wide-body aircraft market is now picking up steam, said Ron Epstein, aerospace analyst at Bank of America, with orders starting to get handed over faster to customers.
International travel, especially at the high end, has been particularly strong in the years after the pandemic as travelers splash out on vacations around the world. More and more global airlines are looking at snagging long-haul jets like Boeing’s Dreamliner and Airbus’ A330 and A350s for the coming years, heating up the wide-body airplane market, analysts said.
Globally, airplanes flew nearly 84% full in November, the highest level on record, according to the latest data available from the International Air Transport Association, an airline industry group.
With travel demand still robust, orders to replace older jets and secure new ones will continue to fuel growth.
“The magic, if you will, of air transportation is until somebody comes up with a transporter, you know, [like] ‘Star Trek,’ where you sort of vaporize and show up someplace else, we’re going to be flying,” Epstein said.
Crude prices fall back below $100 a barrel as markets hope an agreement can be reached between the two sides.
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Broad-based rally fuelled by de-escalation hopes as investors turn optimistic about global peace
KARACHI:
The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) opened on a distinctly bullish note as a renewed whisper of global calm set the tone for trading on Tuesday. The benchmark KSE-100 Index surged sharply in early hours, reflecting a wave of optimism among investors. At 9:39am, the index was hovering around 164,322.07, with gains of 3,730.74 points or 2.32%. It was then trading at 164,782.58, advancing with 4,191.25 points, or 2.61% at 12:34pm.
The rally follows growing expectations of a possible resumption of diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, reviving hopes of de-escalation in a conflict that has shaken global financial markets.
The shift in sentiment comes in stark contrast to the previous session, where the market endured heavy losses amid failed negotiations and a spike in oil prices, triggering widespread panic selling across sectors.
Today, however, investors appear to be pricing in a different narrative – one where diplomacy may yet prevail. The prospect of renewed dialogue has eased concerns over supply disruptions and runaway energy prices, both critical variables for Pakistan’s import-heavy economy.
Read: PSX plunges over 6,600 points as US-Iran talks end without deal
Early gains were broad-based, led by index-heavy sectors such as automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, fertiliser, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs, power generation and refinery, as participants moved to rebuild positions after the recent sell-off.
The sharp rebound underscores the market’s sensitivity to geopolitical signals, where even tentative progress towards peace can ignite strong bullish momentum.
Despite the upbeat start, analysts caution that volatility may persist, with much depending on whether diplomatic efforts translate into concrete outcomes. “Investors are optimistic about the likely resumption of talks between the US and Iran,” AKD Securities Director Research Mohammed Awais Ashraf told The Express Tribune.
Timely affirmation from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to bridge the gap in external financing to be created by the payment of UAE $3.5 billion this month and higher imports due to elevated oil prices have also helped to uplift the sentiment, he added. This is also likely to help in the timely approval of a $1.2 billion disbursement from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after the approval of its executive board, Ashraf predicted.
Around 65,000 young people will be able to train to enter the defence, clean energy, digital and manufacturing industries under the latest round of Government investment into colleges.
The Government will provide £175 million for 19 new Technical Excellence Colleges across the country to deliver training in sectors deemed important for the future of the UK.
Minister for skills Baroness Jacqui Smith said the investment would help build a pipeline of skilled workers for industries key to Britain’s future.
The Government has identified the areas most likely to help grow the economy, Baroness Smith told the Press Association, and said given the war happening in the Middle East, the UK needed to be able to support different ways of getting its energy.
“The Clean Energy (technical excellence colleges) that we’re announcing today will help us to develop that to speed up our shift to clean energy, to protect our energy supply and to help people with their bills,” she said.
“In the area of defence, where, given the instability and some of the new challenges to our defence in the world, and our contribution to that, this Government has pledged a big increase in defence spending that needs to support our armed forces and our capacity, but that spending also needs to deliver quality jobs to the UK defence industry, who will need skilled people in order to be able to deliver it.”
It is estimated nearly 600,000 additional workers will be needed in these key sectors by 2030, the Department for Education said.
If follows the first wave of 10 technical excellence colleges announced last year specialising in construction.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “I want every young person to know there is a clear route into well‑paid work, whatever their background. These colleges put technical skills front and centre, opening up high‑quality jobs in the industries driving Britain’s future.
“We are backing talent across the country, strengthening our workforce and making sure opportunity is built into the system – not left to chance.”
The colleges may spend the funding they receive on specialist equipment, developing new courses, training more specialist staff, and more.
On Monday, Baroness Smith met students and staff at Milton Keynes College, selected as a technical excellence college for digital, where students are already learning about robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).
It comes after the latest figures showed nearly a million (957,000) 16 to 24-year-olds were “Neet” (not in education, employment or training) in October to December 2025.
The high number of young people who were Neet was a “loss of opportunity” and a “loss for the country”, Baroness Smith told PA.
“That’s why we need really high-quality provision for young people between 16 to 19 to be able to access,” she said.
“We need our schools to better identify the young people who are potentially going to become Neet, we need them to take responsibility for making sure that young people have got the places, the college places, the apprenticeships, the jobs to go into.
“And we need brilliant colleges like Milton Keynes, where I am today, to be supported, to be able to provide the opportunities for young people who would otherwise be lost at such a crucial time in their lives and for the future of the skills that we need as a country as well.”
The Government has set a target for two-thirds of young people to be in higher education, higher-level training or doing a gold standard apprenticeship by age 25.
Jawad Al Midani, 21, started studying at Milton Keynes College for a Level 1 course, and has since worked his way up to studying for a Higher National Diploma (HND) in cyber security.
“I feel as soon as I finish my qualifications I’ll be ready to start my career,” he told PA.
Christian Proctor, 18, who is studying for a Higher National Certificate (HNC) in games design and will go on to an HND next year, said he was confident the skills he was learning would equip him for the next step once he finished college.
The 19 new Technical Excellence Colleges are as follows:
Defence
– Blackpool and The Fylde College– City College Plymouth– Lincoln College– RNN Group– Yeovil College
Clean Energy
– Colchester Institute– South Bank Colleges– The City of Liverpool College– The Education Training Collective– University Centre Somerset College Group
Digital and Technologies
– Birmingham Metropolitan College– Capital City College Group– Gloucestershire College– LTE Group– Milton Keynes College
Advanced Manufacturing
– City of Wolverhampton College– New College Durham– Newcastle and Stafford College Group– Weston College of Further and Higher Education
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