United Airlines places massive $15B order for 270 Boeing, Airbus jets
United Airlines plans to order 200 Boeing 737 Max jets and 70 Airbus planes in the biggest aircraft purchase the U.S. has seen in a decade.
The fleet upgrades announced Tuesday will cost the airline roughly $15 billion, based on estimates from aircraft appraiser Ascent by Cirium.
The show of faith in the 737 Max bodes well for Wichita manufacturers, 2,800 of whom were laid off by Spirit AeroSystems last January with the future of the beleaguered jet still unclear after two fatal crashes.
Spirit CEO Tom Gentile said in May that 600 Wichita employees had been called back to work and that twice that number would likely be recalled by the end of the year.
“More planes means more manufacturing jobs in Wichita, and more opportunities for Americans to get back to traveling,” Sen. Roger Marshall said on Twitter.
Cornell Beard, president of the Wichita Machinists Union, said new orders are always a good thing, but some qualified workers have been lured away by out-of-state manufacturers offering higher hourly rates.
“Now you’re laid off with experience, so that experience is very valuable to other competitors,” Beard said. “You can come back for the same wage you left at or you can go someplace else.”
Spirit delivered 29 Boeing 737 MAX shipsets in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 18 during the first three months of 2020.
The United order calls for 150 737 Max 10s and 50 of the smaller. Airbus will supply 70 planes from their A321neo line.
“It’s big for us. There’s no question about Wichita, and I think the flying public will benefit from it too,” said Dean Headley, a Wichita State researcher and co-author of the annual Airline Quality Report.
Headley said it appears United is “anteing up pretty big” on the idea of a sustained post-COVID travel boom. The International Air Transport Association warns that air travel likely won’t reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024, but airline revenue has been promising in recent months.
“There’s a flow of revenue coming in now but they had a year of really, really bad revenue,” Headley said.
He said United, which slotted in eighth in the annual ranking of the country’s 10 biggest airlines, is notorious for having narrow plane seats.
“One of the things that’s probably best for the traveler is that they’re talking about more legroom, so maybe they’ve heard the complaints that people are saying they’re so jammed in there that they don’t like flying,” Headley said.
United has yet to say how many of their existing planes will be taken out of service to accommodate the 270-jet acquisition. Headley said the fleet upgrade will take some time.
“This is not something that’s going to happen next year,” he said. “This is going to be a full five-, six- year process to get some of the airplanes out of service, new airplanes in, built and delivered.
“This year’s travel boom is not necessarily going to benefit much from the new 737 and what United announced, but they are on the right track.”
Spirit AeroSystems did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
This story was originally published June 29, 2021 at 2:55 PM.