A220 Grounded, 777X Updates _ Bad News For Boeing

A warm welcome back to the channel. A massive Boeing loss, the confirmation also of an Airbus A220 grounding that I think we all knew about, and 777X news. Why not begin there? We're in a world of 777X frustration. Etihad Airways remains the outlier with a bit of a different negative outlook. Boeing's upcoming flagship product, the 777X was meant to enter service at the top of the decade. Now it remains in a state of uncertainty as certification progress has been delayed and continues to be an uphill battle to obtain. As a result, many airlines are experiencing substantial delays in acquiring the aircraft, impacting their operations from routes, expansion to aircraft retirements. Etihad Airways, however, says that it is still on track to receive its first 777X in 2031 as part of network growth plans. And as a result, it ironically remains one of the few airlines that is relatively calm about the delays that are taking place. See, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier probably perfectly fits into the category of problems where this does not affect it. Being unaffected, it's largely unfazed by the persistent delays in securing approval for the jet. This is a stark contrast to a company such as Emirates or Lufthansa who have been waiting for this plane now for 5 plus years and still don't have it in their hands. The airline's chief executive spoke with The National over the last couple of weeks, expressing a continued optimistic view not just for the 777X program but really aircraft deliveries period, with the situation for them as a company actually only improving. See, Etihad Airways in the last month said that the last 12 months had been one of its busiest in terms of deliveries in company history. So while yes, delays have been felt across the industry and this hasn't meant that Etihad Airways has been immune, they would consider themselves at least lately more than lucky in comparison to some of their competitors as they have been able to add capacity and they've now obtained the title of being one of the fastest companies growing in the world in terms of acquisition efforts of aircraft. Despite this, the Etihad CEO is well aware of the industry's struggles with shortages of new planes as manufacturers try and navigate supply chain complexities. Luckily, Etihad Airways is well positioned to navigate these struggles without compromising the opportunity to grow moving forward as they position themselves to avoid having to wait for uncertified aircraft types and find means to manage capacity in other ways, remembering that this all stems from the 777X delay which will now see a first delivery pushed back to 2027 at the earliest. Over to the next story and it's unfortunate news but I'd also say probably expected. Swiss is moving ahead with the grounding of its entire A220-100 fleet in really an unprecedented shift of strategy amid its battle for engines. The decision will see the carrier ground all nine of its A220-100s for a period of almost two years tentatively as they battle Pratt & Whitney GTF issues. Confirmed by the airline's chief financial officer during a recent quarterly earnings call, the decision, while tough, is vital for the company to power through its struggles and improve the fleet. What grounding the A220-100s will do for the business is improve the availability of the A220-300 fleet. This is the largest model in the program but it is also affected by the GTF woes. Moving forward, engines removed from the grounded Dash 100 model will be to support the Dash 300 where there have been 21 deliveries. It is not just the higher capacity option but there are more units of this at Swiss and as the airline confidently say is the model that is way more better suited to their operations. Swiss has really long broadcasted the affection for the Dash 300 over the smaller model with not only the larger aircraft more cost-efficient on its day-to-day network but it's better for the requirements that it had as laid out across its In July, the airline spoke in an exclusive interview with Aviation Week and did discuss the thought process behind its A220-100 operations where he hinted at a possible retirement as they move forward with a weighing up of the structure of their fleet planning. In that interview, the airline's head of aircraft assessment management said that while both variants were flown for very different reasons, the Dash 300 was certainly more integral and probably more importantly the word used was beneficial. Most notably the Dash 100 was chosen for its ability to fly into London City which has that steeper approach. Now the Dash 100s are being grounded present concerns about how the airline will move forward across its network but the good news is that Swiss is not forecasting an overall reduction in operational capacity on London City services and across the network the benefits should outweigh the negatives as those long grounded A220-300s will finally be to return to service. Whether this is a permanent grounding remains to be seen but certainly with a lot of the comments shared by executives at the company, their affection for the A220-100 just isn't simply present. Over to the final story where during Boeing's third quarter results, there were many areas ultimately of interest but it was all highlighted by a $5.4 billion loss. The manufacturer did see overall revenues jump 30% to $23.3 billion thanks to a year-over-year increase in deliveries and what has been a strong 12 months for the company in terms of output rates certainly in comparison to the last 5-7 years. However, the primary focus was the larger than expected loss and this was really driven by the $4.9 billion charge to the 777X program. Across the third quarter, steady progress was made on the planemaker's production increases across the 737 MAX which have been in the works for some time. See as the quarter came to a close, Boeing secured the all-important approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to increase monthly output from 38 to 42. That 38 figure was what the regulator had capped the manufacturer at for nearly 2 years as it assessed its operations. Certainly while there are negatives to be felt across the business and losses like these are not appealing to see, it is ultimately a business in rebuild mode and that comes with many ups and downs. The thing is not all programs are working in cohesion as of yet and this creates quite a bit of a discrepancy. Boeing says the ability to confirm a production increase with the FAA on the MAX however does show that it's moving in a positive direction after almost 2 years of thorough work to right the systemic wrongs that had caused the repeated quality issues on that production floor from occurring. Boeing's quarterly performance could have been even higher as well if it weren't for certification delays across its popular 737 MAX program too which still has 2 unapproved models. With added costs across not just the 737 MAX but now the 777X, securing approval as I'm sure you can imagine for these jets will go a long way towards the full recovery of the business and certainly help improve its financial quarterly performance. While it will be great for Boeing to finally get these planes certified and also turn a profit, what will be the major challenge and something the planemaker has placed great importance on is sustained success following the completion of the rebuild. It doesn't want to backtrack, it only wants to continue improving. That is crucial and that is why it's taking so long now to set itself up for future decades. Thanks for watching, you can leave your thoughts down below in the comments. Take care, do be safe and I'll see you tomorrow.