Premium #333 – Does the MAX10 mean the death of the MAX9?

The Boeing 737 MAX10 was the hit of the Paris Air Show, garnering 326 commitments for the aircraft.  But the majority of those commitments, 179 of them, were simply swapping of one model of the MAX family for another, and didn’t increase the backlog for the program.  We suspect that most of the swaps, including the 100 aircraft commitment from United , were from the MAX9 to the MAX10, which has better performance and economics, despite slightly shorter range.

Of the 147 new commitments for the MAX10, only 43 were firm orders at the show, which seemed the trend at Paris this year.  Overall, only about 25% of the orders announced at the show were firm, down from prior years.  While the vast majority of commitments typically do turn into orders, some will occasionally fall through.  We prefer to deal in firm order backlog when analyzing the success of particular models, but are confident that the virtually all of the MAX10 commitments announced at Paris will turn into firm orders.  Airshows are the time for CEOs to make the deals, and then delegate to their staffs to vet and finalize the details in due course.