Batik was the launch customer the Boeing MAX with its first revenue flight May 21. We tracked the airline’s three MAX’s and 23 737-800s between May 21 and July 2 to compare how these aircaft were doing. Our data source is Flightradar24.
The table below shows our findings. We defined flights that operated on scedule or early as on-time. Where a flight was delayed or behind schedule we defined these as delayed. The data source does list flights that were diverted or cancelled.
The actual performance by tail number for the MAX looks like this. Most MAX flights have been undertaken by the first aircraft, the others having been recently added to the active fleet.
In the 42 day’s of service, 9M-LRC averaged 4.4 flights per day, compared to the average 737-800 at four per day. So the MAX is working slightly harder.
As the first table demonstrates, the airline is not particulary on-time with half its flights being delayed. We did not allow for any margin – if a flight was even one minute late, we called it a delay. This may be harsh, but we had to make a rule and kept it for both fleets. For the 737-800 fleet, if we give the airline 15 minutes grace, then delays fell to 5.4% and for the MAX fleet it would be 5.7%.
It appears the MAX fleet is being worked as hard the the rest of the 737 fleet at Batik. It’s performance at this early stage suggests that it can be expected to perform as well as the 800s.
