Boeing is preparing to delay its all-new 777X jet by several months or up to a year, three people familiar with the matter said, as the COVID-19 crisis exacerbates a drop in demand for the industry’s largest jetliners.
An announcement of the delay could come as early as next week when Boeing announces earnings, one of the people said.
Boeing has been working to get the 777X, a larger version of the 777 mini-jumbo, into the hands of customers in 2021. That’s already a year later than originally scheduled after snags with its General Electric GE9X engines among other issues.
Now Boeing is preparing to delay the timeline by perhaps a year, two of the people said. A third said a delay was likely but that Boeing wanted to get production “going hard” to put planes in the air by 2022-2023.