File photo taken on June 19, 2017 shows a Boeing 737 MAX 9 at the 52nd International Paris Air and Space Show in Bourget, France. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen)
The company's poor sales record has been attributed mainly to the 737 MAX crisis, after two MAX jets were involved in two fatal crashes in October 2018 and March 2019.
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- Top U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing Company said Tuesday it delivered a total of 380 commercial airplanes in 2019, its lowest number since 2008.
Boeing lost 87 orders for commercial planes last year, meaning cancellations outnumbered new purchases in 2019. It delivered just 79 commercial jets, including nine Boeing 737 planes, in the fourth quarter of last year.
Its total deliveries in 2019 fell by 53 percent compared with the previous year, when the company delivered 806 jets to its customers around the world.
The company's poor sales record has been attributed mainly to the 737 MAX crisis, after two MAX jets were involved in two fatal crashes in October 2018 and March 2019. The two crashes killed a total of 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
Rescuers work beside the wreckage of an Ethiopian Airlines' aircraft at the crash site, some 50 km east of Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019. (Xinhua/Wang Shoubao)
All MAX aircraft have been grounded globally since March 2019, with their return to service delayed several times after Boeing failed to obtain certified approval from U.S. federal regulators.
Boeing produced about 400 MAX airplanes throughout 2019, though they were not delivered to customers and remain sitting idle in the company's storage facilities.
Last month, Boeing decided to temporarily halt production of the 737 MAX, partly as federal regulators extended the certification process of the troubled jets into 2020. ■
