Imagine , coming into your normal carpark morning only to find your usual parking spot occupied by a commercial airliner.
Such is what is happening to employees at Boeing manufacturing facilities in the Seattle area, where undelivered 737 Max jets are being parked ― and the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval ― before they can retake the skies.
Having apparently used up all of the storage space it typically allots for the jets, Boeing is now parking them in the employee lot.The FAA, ordered the 737 Max grounded in March after 346 people died in two separate crashes of that type of plane over the course of five months.
Boeing has struggled to manage its supply of 737 Max jets months after the fallout from two fatal crashes involving the planes in October and March.
“We are using resources across the Boeing enterprise during the pause in 737 Max deliveries, including our facilities in Puget Sound, Boeing San Antonio, and at Moses Lake,” the Boeing spokesperson Paul Bergman told Business Insider. “This is part of our inventory-management plan.”
The plane maker is also shelling out quite a bit of money just to store those undelivered airplanes. Bloomberg reported that Boeing is spending some $2,000 a month to park each of them.t remains unclear when the 500 or so grounded 737 Max planes will return to the air.
“We’re going to bring a Max back up in the air that will be one of the safest airplanes ever to fly,” Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said at the Paris Air Show earlier this month. “But we also know it will take time rebuilding the confidence of our customers and the flying public, and this will be a long-term effort.”
The effect to commercial air travel has been tremendous: American Airlines has had to cancel some 115 scheduled flights per day. A hundred flights daily have been canceled by Southwest Airlines, as have some 2,400 United flights in June and July alone.
The situations had led to cancelations and delays of flights using other kinds of jets, which have to be rerouted to cover Max routes.
American Airlines announced it hopes to bring the 737 Max back to its fleet this fall, according to The Points Guy, adding 754 weekly flights on 31 routes. But it remains to be seen if the Federal Aviation Administration will give Boeing the all-clear by then.
