Insight – Boeing’s NG and MAX Orders and Deliveries

A perennial question is why Boeing decided to stop identifying 737 models ordered and delivered. During the NG era, model breakdowns for orders and deliveries were nothing special. But with the arrival of the MAX that changed. A former Boeing employee shared that the reason was that orders were so skewed in favor of the MAX 8, with almost no interest in the MAX 7, the company decided not to break down the numbers. Oddly, the same thing happened at Airbus where the interest in the A319neo (the MAX 7’s main competitor) was also, shall we say, anemic. But Airbus broke down the numbers.

Looking at data from 2000 through the most (July) data published. The first charts list the NG orders and deliveries.  The key item to notice is that the -800 is what the market wanted. It was the ideally sized 737. A secondary item to notice is that what was ordered is not necessarily what was delivered. This is partly because the period we are working with – history prior to 2000  impacts the difference between orders and deliveries.