This blog is counting down to the day the 10,000 Boeing 737 is delivered. This may prompt you to ask: when will this day likely be? Luckily, based on Boeing's statements about production rates, this question can be answered fairly easily. Boeing is currently producing 31.5 737s a month. From early 2012 this will increase to 35 a month, and then to 38 a month in the second quarter of 2013, before hitting 42 airframes a month by the first half of 2014. At the end of June 2011, there had been a total of 6819 deliveries. Obviously these aren't precise times, and I imagine production-ramp up isn't an instant step change, but by assuming that production goes from one level to the other during the given periods, we can make an estimate of how much longer it will take to deliver the remaining 3181 needed to hit 10,000. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations we arrive at the period of March-April 2018. Interestingly, this would be just over 50 years after the 737 entered service with Lufthansa in February 1968. Assuming the 737 makes this date, it will also be the first civil airliner of any type to have been in production for 50 years. The 10,000th may come even earlier - Boeing has flagged that it is looking at increasing the production rate to 60 airframes a month in the longer term.
A question to readers - who do you think will take the 10,000th Boeing 737?
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Going Backwards
Current Order Tally: 8894 Orders
Well, the countdown got off to a fairly inauspicious start. For the period from the 1st to the 12th of July Boeing took an order for 1 737 to a Business Jet customer, but recorded a cancellation for 35 from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, which has been shedding aircraft orders for the past year in the wake of the global financial crisis, including another 32 737s earlier in the year. Applying that to the end-of-June figure, the 737 order book now stands at 8894 aircraft. I'm not privy to day-to-day delivery figures, so I can't say for sure what the current backlog is. Boeing updates its delivery figures on a monthly basis, so I will do the same unless someone can provide me with reliable delivery figures.
Hopefully this backtracking is only temporary: numerous sources are reporting that American Airlines is poised to place a large order for narrowbody aircraft, possibly split between the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320. If the reports are true, this might be the order that takes the 737 past the 9,000 mark.
Well, the countdown got off to a fairly inauspicious start. For the period from the 1st to the 12th of July Boeing took an order for 1 737 to a Business Jet customer, but recorded a cancellation for 35 from Dubai Aerospace Enterprise, which has been shedding aircraft orders for the past year in the wake of the global financial crisis, including another 32 737s earlier in the year. Applying that to the end-of-June figure, the 737 order book now stands at 8894 aircraft. I'm not privy to day-to-day delivery figures, so I can't say for sure what the current backlog is. Boeing updates its delivery figures on a monthly basis, so I will do the same unless someone can provide me with reliable delivery figures.
Hopefully this backtracking is only temporary: numerous sources are reporting that American Airlines is poised to place a large order for narrowbody aircraft, possibly split between the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320. If the reports are true, this might be the order that takes the 737 past the 9,000 mark.
Monday, 11 July 2011
Welcome
The Boeing 737 is the most produced jet-powered transport aircraft in history, with 6819 delivered by the end of June 2011, and a further 2109 on order, according to Boeing's figures. With a total of 8928 orders on the books by the end of the first half of 2011, and Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice-president of business development and strategic integration Nicole Piasecki indicating that if the company does choose to offer an all-new small aeroplane the 737 will remain in production, the 737 will soon be entering the rarefied air occupied by a select club of aircraft: those whose production run has exceeded 10,000 examples.
A look at the list of most produced aircraft at Wikipedia shows that the bulk of this club is mainly made up of Second World War combat aircraft such as the Messerschmit Bf 109 and Supermarine Spitfire, and light single-engine training and touring aircraft such as the Cessna 172 and Piper Cherokee. The only heavy (maximum take-off weight greater than 5700kg) transport aircraft on the list are the Douglas DC-3 and the Mil Mi-8 helicopter. The DC-3 is the unassailable leader in the passenger transport aeroplane field, with over 16,000 examples built, including nearly 5000 under licence in the USSR and 500 under licence in Japan. However, it should be noted that the bulk of this immense production run was due to the imperatives of the Second World War. The Mi-8 also owes the bulk of its greater than 17,000 examples to military aviation. Thus, the 737 will take a unique place in the 10,000 club, as the:
- first primarily civilian transport category aircraft
- first heavy jet aircraft
- heaviest aircraft
According to a 5-year-old article from Flight International, "on average more than 1,250 737s are in the air at any one time. In the 5min it takes to read this feature, more than 65 737s will have landed and taken off. Around 541 operators fly 737s into 1,200 cities in 190 countries and territories. More than 12 billion passengers have flown on the 737 fleet, which, since entering service in 1968, has accumulated more than 120 billion kilometres (65 billion nautical miles). The 737 fleet has racked up more than 296 million hours of revenue service – roughly the same as almost 33,790 years of continuous service. Of the more than 16,200 Boeing/Douglas commercial jets ordered, just over 33% have been 737 family members and the 737 represents more than 25% of the worldwide fleet of large commercial jet airliners." These figures are all somewhat mind-boggling, but the distance travelled is the one that took my attention. By way of comparison, the Earth is on average 150 million kilometres from the Sun, and the most distant man made object in space, Voyager 1, is currently about 17.5 billion kilometres from the Sun (further out than the Solar System's known planets and dwarf planets). These figures are all the more extraordinary when we read in the same article that the 737 programme almost didn't survive the 1970s. Given the 737 fleet has continued to grow in the past half-decade, these figures are now well out of date, so I will endeavour to update them over the life of this blog, as I am able to source the information.
As the 737 order book and production totals tick towards the 10,000 mark over the coming months and years, this blog will keep track of the orders and deliveries, and examine the history of the worldwide Boeing 737 fleet. This is an individual effort by an aviation enthusiast, and not connected to any airline or to The Boeing Company (other than appreciating them for making the 737 the success it is!). Whether you are an aviation professional, a frequent flyer, a first time passenger or just "plane interested", I hope you will enjoy this blog dedicated to the Boeing 737, or as it could well be known, "the little airliner that could".
A look at the list of most produced aircraft at Wikipedia shows that the bulk of this club is mainly made up of Second World War combat aircraft such as the Messerschmit Bf 109 and Supermarine Spitfire, and light single-engine training and touring aircraft such as the Cessna 172 and Piper Cherokee. The only heavy (maximum take-off weight greater than 5700kg) transport aircraft on the list are the Douglas DC-3 and the Mil Mi-8 helicopter. The DC-3 is the unassailable leader in the passenger transport aeroplane field, with over 16,000 examples built, including nearly 5000 under licence in the USSR and 500 under licence in Japan. However, it should be noted that the bulk of this immense production run was due to the imperatives of the Second World War. The Mi-8 also owes the bulk of its greater than 17,000 examples to military aviation. Thus, the 737 will take a unique place in the 10,000 club, as the:
- first primarily civilian transport category aircraft
- first heavy jet aircraft
- heaviest aircraft
According to a 5-year-old article from Flight International, "on average more than 1,250 737s are in the air at any one time. In the 5min it takes to read this feature, more than 65 737s will have landed and taken off. Around 541 operators fly 737s into 1,200 cities in 190 countries and territories. More than 12 billion passengers have flown on the 737 fleet, which, since entering service in 1968, has accumulated more than 120 billion kilometres (65 billion nautical miles). The 737 fleet has racked up more than 296 million hours of revenue service – roughly the same as almost 33,790 years of continuous service. Of the more than 16,200 Boeing/Douglas commercial jets ordered, just over 33% have been 737 family members and the 737 represents more than 25% of the worldwide fleet of large commercial jet airliners." These figures are all somewhat mind-boggling, but the distance travelled is the one that took my attention. By way of comparison, the Earth is on average 150 million kilometres from the Sun, and the most distant man made object in space, Voyager 1, is currently about 17.5 billion kilometres from the Sun (further out than the Solar System's known planets and dwarf planets). These figures are all the more extraordinary when we read in the same article that the 737 programme almost didn't survive the 1970s. Given the 737 fleet has continued to grow in the past half-decade, these figures are now well out of date, so I will endeavour to update them over the life of this blog, as I am able to source the information.
As the 737 order book and production totals tick towards the 10,000 mark over the coming months and years, this blog will keep track of the orders and deliveries, and examine the history of the worldwide Boeing 737 fleet. This is an individual effort by an aviation enthusiast, and not connected to any airline or to The Boeing Company (other than appreciating them for making the 737 the success it is!). Whether you are an aviation professional, a frequent flyer, a first time passenger or just "plane interested", I hope you will enjoy this blog dedicated to the Boeing 737, or as it could well be known, "the little airliner that could".
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