Emirates chairman has message for Boeing: 'Pull yourself together'

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — One of Boeing’s biggest customers has issued a call to action to its new management team, expressing frustration over the safety crisis facing the U.S. aircraft maker and delays resulting in order deliveries.

“We’re not really happy with what’s happening, we always wanted to see this plane come into the fleet when it was promised – and there’s a delay, it’s not just because of us” , said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President. and CEO of Dubai’s flagship airline Emirates, CNBC’s Dan Murphy said Tuesday at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.

The Emirates Airlines Boeing 777-31H(ER) takes off from Los Angeles International Airport on January 13, 2021.

Aaronp / Bauer-Griffin | GC Images | Getty Images

The company delivered 83 planes in the three months ended March 31 – most of them narrow-body 737s – compared to 157 in the previous quarter and 130 planes in the year-ago period.

Al Maktoum, who sits at the helm of the world’s largest long-haul airline and helped launch it in 1985, echoed the sentiments of many other airline CEOs regarding Boeing’s expectations.

“I think they have to put a lot of pressure to make sure they deliver to the customer what they promised,” he said.

Asked if he had a message for the aircraft manufacturer, Al Maktoum said: “I always say, you know, pull yourself together and do it. And I think they can do it.”

CNBC has contacted Boeing for comment.

The president did not indicate that Emirates would cancel Boeing’s orders or transfer them to French rival Airbus.

“No, no, I won’t be able to say exactly what we are planning,” he said when asked about the likelihood of such a move. “But I think you see that we are renovating a large number of aircraft within the existing fleet…And there will be no shortage within Dubai’s capacity.”

He cited the airline’s expansion of part of its existing fleet, including the mammoth double-decker Airbus A380s, as helping to provide sufficient passenger capacity.

The fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-9 MAX Flight 1282, which was forced to make an emergency landing with a gap in the fuselage, is seen during its investigation by National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Portland, Oregon, United States. January 7, 2024.

NTSB | Via Reuters

Boeing’s recently appointed new management team is now tasked with managing the company’s worst crisis since 2018-2019, in which two of its new 737 Max planes crashed in six months, killing 346 people.

Following the Alaska Airlines door explosion in January, the Federal Aviation Administration’s six-week audit of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems “revealed several instances in which the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements,” according to a March 4 FAA statement.

“The FAA has identified non-compliance issues in manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control” at Boeing, she said. The regulatory agency said it informed Boeing executives that it “must consider the audit findings as part of its overall corrective action plan to address systemic quality control issues” and address its “safety culture”.

In a previous statement cited by CNBC, a Boeing spokesperson said in response to the FAA’s findings that the company was continuing “to implement immediate changes and develop a comprehensive action plan to enhance safety and the quality “.

The company’s website says it continues to support the NTSB and FAA investigations into the Jan. 5 crash. »

—CNBC Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.