By Joanna Plucinska and Tim Hepher
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The head of European budget giant Ryanair praised relations with Boeing under its new leadership and said the planemaker had agreed to supply alternative jets in time for summer 2027 if it fails to certify its new 737 MAX 10 this year.
“I think we’ll get our first 15 MAX 10s in 2027 but Boeing have now agreed, if they don’t get certification this year and they can’t deliver us MAX 10s, they will deliver us additional MAX 8s in time for summer 2027,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters, referring to the MAX 8200 model used by Ryanair.
The 737 MAX 10 is the largest member of Boeing’s narrowbody jet family and Boeing is waiting for approval from regulators following delays in the wake of a wider safety crisis. It has drafted one of its top troubleshooters, Mike Sinnett, to oversee this and other delayed development programmes.
“I think we are getting more confident that there’s a good team of people now between (new Boeing CEO) Kelly Ortberg, (Commercial CEO) Stephanie Pope and the rest now running Boeing, and as long as nothing unforeseen happens, I think we will get there through 2025, 2026, 2027,” O’Leary said in an interview.
He said he was confident after meeting Pope earlier this week that commercial jets would not be sucked into trade tensions between the United States and trade powers including Europe, and spelled out detailed plans to recover lost output.
For this year, Boeing has agreed to bring forward some aircraft deliveries but this still leaves the Irish carrier short of 30 aircraft this summer, O’Leary said.
Ryanair does not typically agree to take planes after the height of summer, preferring to delay until the following peak period, but it has agreed to take 25 of those aircraft between August and October this year, he said.
Boeing’s production of the 737 MAX has been capped at 38 a month by federal regulators following the mid-air blowout of a door plug last year. It has said it hopes to reach that level and then push on to 42 some time this year, subject to approval.
O’Leary, who is briefed regularly on the progress of jets on order by one of Boeing’s top customers, said Boeing had produced 32 narrowbody planes in March and would reach 38 by end-April.
It aims to reach 42 a month by September or October and 48 within 12-18 months, he said. There has been a marked increase in quality of deliveries in the past year following earlier problems that included rags left in a fuel tank, he added.
Boeing had no immediate comment.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher. Editing by Mark Potter)
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