Boeing forced to store undelivered 737 Max jets in employee car park

Planemaker faces storage issue for malfunctioning aircraft

Boeing has been storing some of its undelivered 737 Max jets in an employee car park.

The beleaguered planemaker said the move was part of its “inventory-management plan”, according to Business Insider.

Footage taken by Seattle news station KING-TV shows a number of Tui aircraft parked alongside cars at the company’s Renton facility in Washington, US.

“We are using resources across the Boeing enterprise during the pause in 737 Max deliveries, including our facilities in Puget Sound, Boeing San Antonio and at Moses Lake,” said a Boeing spokesperson.

All Boeing 737 Max planes have been grounded since March 2019, after a software glitch was implicated in two fatal crashes.

In October 2018, Lion Air flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea 12 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 passengers and crew.

Just four months later, Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people aboard.

It is thought that both crashes were partly caused by the same software problem: the 737 Max’s new Manoeuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an anti-stall system.

Boeing is currently waiting for approval on the software upgrade to stop the problem happening again.

As a result, airlines are not taking delivery of their 737 Max orders until the problem has been unequivocally rectified, leading to storage issues for Boeing.

Boeing said in April that the 737 Max crisis had already cost it $1bn.