Boeing slips on report the troubled 737 Max could remain grounded into 2020

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The Boeing 737 Max will likely remain grounded until 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The plane has been grounded since March following two fatal crashes found to be linked to the plane’s software.
Shares of Boeing slid on the news.
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It looks like the Boeing 737 Max won’t be seeing airtime soon.

Shares of Boeing slid as much as 1.5% early Monday after the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the grounding of its 737 Max could extend past the end of the year and into 2020.

The plane was scheduled to return to flying in September, but a new slew of issues has led company executives and engineers and regulators from the Federal Aviation Administration to expand safety analyses of the model. That means that the 737 Max likely won’t be back in rotation this year and is tentatively expected to return in January 2020, the WSJ said.

The Boeing 737 Max has been grounded since March after one of the planes crashed in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people onboard. An earlier crash in October — also fatal — led to Boeing making a software fix to the anti-stall system, which was tied to both crashes. Slow installation of the update, and delays in pilot trainings have kept the planes grounded, even during the busy summer travel season.

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Many airlines have already retired the Boeing 737 Max’s in their fleets for the year. American Airlines Group said that the plane would return to its schedule in November, the fifth time the company has pushed off flying the Max. United Airlines also said that it would wait until November to fly the 737 Max.

American, United, and Southwest Airlines have 72 Max planes between them. The grounding of the Max has means they’ve lost out on hundreds of millions of dollars from thousands of cancelled flights.

Boeing leadership and FAA officials believe there is a chance that the 737 Max could return to the skies in the fall, but the report in The Journal says that it’s more likely that it will return in 2020.

Boeing has gained 11.5% year to date.

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