Leeham News and Analysis
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Boeing’s Long Arc from Disciplined Rework to Distributed Chaos
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By the Leeham News Team
Part 1 of a five part series about Boeing’s path to recovery.
May 4, 2026, © Leeham News: From a 30-airplane cockpit rework crisis on the 767 to a supplier-driven configuration mystery on the 787, the history of Boeing’s pre-production change incorporation process is a master class in what happens when an industry’s best practices are forgotten in the name of financial engineering.
Getting it right the first time and avoiding time-consuming, costly rework are crucial for Boeing’s future airplane programs—and its long-term financial recovery.
In a previous article, LNA detailed “the high cost of getting it wrong.” We continue our in-depth exam of some of the fundamentals of Boeing’s path to recovery.
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The change incorporation events for the Boeing 767, 747-400, 777, and 787 are examined in the five-part Leeham News special report. Credit: Leeham News.
What Change Incorporation Actually Is—And Why It Is So Hard
When Boeing builds an entirely new type of airliner, the factory does not wait for regulators to complete their final review before rolling jets off the assembly line. Assembly of pre-production aircraft begins months or years before the FAA issues a type certificate.
There is a powerful economic logic driving this decision. A new commercial jet program represents an investment of billions of dollars. Every month that passes between the start of certification flight testing and the first revenue-generating delivery is a month of continued capital consumption with no return.
Airlines that signed purchase agreements are planning route networks, crew training schedules, and fleet retirements around contracted delivery dates. The manufacturer’s entire financial model for a new program depends on compressing the interval between first flight and first delivery to the greatest extent possible.
Reader Comments Open Forum, Week of May 4
LNA’s Comments Open Forum allows Readers opportunities to comment about any post (note, we said “Post”, not any “Topic”). All comments will be held for review and Moderation per our new policy. The Open Forum enables Readers to Comment on paywall articles (to the extent the paywall preview is open to all readers).
Maintain civility and follow Reader Comment rules.
A new Open Forum will be posted weekly.
Change incorporation on Boeing 777-9s will take “years”, CEO said
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By Scott Hamilton
Background to a new series
May 3, 2026, © Leeham News: Boeing has more than 30 777-9s built and stored at the Everett (WA) Paine Field, where the 777s are assembled.
Some have been stored since 2020. Years of testing, fixing, and certification delays pushed the anticipated delivery to next year. However, every stored aircraft must undergo change incorporation first to meet the standards required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which involves years of scrutiny, system updates, and fixes identified in testing.
Beginning tomorrow, LNA will publish a five-part series on incorporating change. Boeing has received a lot of publicity about this practice since the March 2019 grounding of the 737 MAX, the early 787s that were rife with design and production issues, and the suspension of 787 deliveries beginning in October 2020. These programs had unprecedented levels of change incorporation required.
However, the process isn’t new, and Boeing learned a lot over the decades. LNA describes the evolution of change incorporation since the Boeing 767 program. The 767 was originally designed as a three-crew cockpit. A few airplanes were produced in this configuration. After the FAA approved operation by two-person crews, Boeing had to change these airplanes from three- to two-person cockpits and change those in production.
LNA recounts change incorporation for the 767, 747-400, 777 Classic, 787, and the 777X.
CEO Kelly Ortberg, responding to a question on the 1Q2026 earnings call, gave a high-level outline of what Boeing faces with the 777X.
Bjorn’s Corner: Blended Wing Body Airliners. Part 8
By Bjorn Fehrm
May 1, 2026, ©. Leeham News: We are making a series of articles on the Blended Wing Body (BWB) as a potentially more efficient design for passenger-carrying airliners than the classical Tube-And-Wing (TAW) configuration.
In the seventh article last week, we discussed the structural difference between a BWB and a Tube-And-Wing aircraft. The classical aircraft has divided the cabin pressure problem, causing cyclic pressure stress on the cabin enclosure, by enclosing the cabin in an optimal closed-tube configuration, and the wings’ aerodynamic stresses from gusts, hard landings, and the possible engine-out case are managed by a one-piece wingbox from tip to tip of the wing. These loads differ in character and therefore use different structural concepts in tube and wing aircraft.
The BWB mixes these loads, where the cabin shape, being a wide and long box-like compartment, complicates the structural concepts, where fatigue-sensitive bending loads from the cabin pressure are hard to avoid. It’s not made easier by the wing loads being absorbed by the same structure.
Figure 1. The JetZero Z4 BWB. Source: JetZero.
Now we look at some BWB passenger-compartment challenges compared with TAW solutions.
MTU Aero Engines posts Q1 gains, sees continued strength despite geopolitical pressures
By Thomas Blackwood
April 30, 2026, © Leeham News: Operating profit and revenues at Germany’s MTU Aero Engines were up in the first quarter of 2026 amid a strengthening position across both the military and commercial divisions.
Adjusted revenue was up 7% from €2.1 billion to €2.2 billion, while adjusted operating profit reached €320 million, 6% higher than in the first quarter of 2025 (€300 million).
The adjusted EBIT margin held steady at 14.2%, compared with 14.3% in the prior-year period, and adjusted net income grew by 3% from €221 million to €229 million.
The company confirmed its guidance for the full year and said that despite the uncertainty with the Iran conflict the board was “confident” it would reach the targets set, of full year adjusted revenue of between €9.2 billion and €9.7 billion, and adjusted EBIT of between €1.35 billion and €1.45 billion.
The Regulatory Reality Behind the Autonomous ATC Gold Rush
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By Vincent E. Bianco III
Vincent Bianco.
April 30, 2026, © Leeham News: Venture capital is flooding into autonomous air traffic control. The investor enthusiasm is rational. The regulatory assumptions behind it are not.
The money Is pouring in for Air Traffic Control (ATC), and it has nothing to do with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Over the past 18 months, a wave of startups has emerged claiming they can automate pieces of ATC using artificial intelligence. Y Combinator backed Enhanced Radar Systems. GTMfund led Oureon Technologies’ $3.5m pre-seed. NoamAI debuted at Airspace World 2025. Venture capital firms that wouldn’t have known what a TRACON was two years ago are now writing checks to companies promising AI-powered air traffic control.
On its face, the investor thesis makes sense. Only 23 of the FAA’s 313 staffed ATC facilities are fully staffed. The controller workforce is aging, recruitment is lagging, and training pipelines are years behind demand. NextGen—the FAA’s multi-billion-dollar modernization program—is roughly 16% complete after $7.5bn invested. The drone market is projected to see 800 million additional flights over the next decade.
The eVTOL companies, Joby, Archer, BETA Technologies, and Wisk, have collectively invested billions to certify aircraft that will operate in airspace where no traffic management infrastructure currently exists.
The market drivers are real. The pain is real. The technology is advancing. So why should anyone pump the brakes?
Airbus 1Q2026 Results: First quarter “suffering”
By Karl Sinclair
April 28, 2026, © Leeham News: An abnormally downbeat Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus, was clearly not pleased with how things progressed in the first quarter of 2026.
When asked when commercial aircraft delivery rates will converge with production rates, he said, “We don’t like to guide or to give rates when it comes to monthly production rates or even quarterly production rates. It’s non-linear and tends to be backloaded in Q2 and Q4 in most years. That’s something that we are suffering from probably more this year than I remember we’ve ever suffered in the first quarter. But we believe, we hope, we believe we should be reasonably back to where we should have been by the end of H1.”
Faury outlined a series of issues plaguing the company, calling it a “desynchronization between production and delivery,” which includes panel quality issues, an “administrative delay” that affected the delivery of nearly 20 aircraft to China, the Pratt & Whitney engine problems, ongoing seating shortfalls, the continuing tariff war, and the recently started Iranian War. The latter two were launched by President Donald Trump.
While he was detailing the current travails of the company, Faury said, “As the basis for its 2026 guidance, the company assumes no additional disruptions to global trade or the world economy, air traffic, the supply chain, its internal operations, and ability to deliver products and services.”
The tenor of the earnings call is somewhat surprising. But Airbus underperformed in its first quarter results. However, this is hardly a “It’s time to sell the silverware” moment.
As aerospace companies pursue AI, FAA lags
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By Scott Hamilton
Pat Shanahan during his Boeing career. Credit: Seattle Times.
April 27, 2026, © Leeham News: Antiquated air traffic control systems and staffing shortages of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been well-known for decades.
Budget and staffing cuts at the FAA by the Trump Administration through its DOGE policy exacerbated these issues. Also affected, but less well known, are staff cuts in the technical and maintenance areas, which also hurt FAA operations.
Even less well known is that certification by the FAA has been dramatically slowed. There are a number of reasons, and certification affects a variety of aircraft programs and companies. Boeing gets the most headlines for the continued delays in certifying the 737-7, 737-10, and 777-9. But this doesn’t stop with Boeing.
Freighter conversion programs by IAI Bedek, a company with a long-established history of converting Boeing products, ran about two years late in certifying its first 777-300ER passenger-to-freighter conversion. Mammoth Freighters, a start-up company created in competition with IAI for -300ER P2F conversions, received its STC in April, behind its 2025 target. Issues contributing to certification delays include licensing intellectual property, engineering delays within the company, and related challenges.
But an underlying issue affecting everyone, aside from staffing shortages and expertise, is that the FAA is stuck in the spreadsheet-and-hard-copy era. As companies advance to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), they are moving faster than the FAA.
As eVTOL and unmanned aircraft firms seek certification, the FAA must develop new regulations. When Boeing, Airbus, GE, and Pratt & Whitney design new airplanes and engines, they’re counting on AI to speed development and certification. But the FAA currently relies on spreadsheets to track details and progress. Furthermore, conflicting regulations create unexpected problems. Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, called on the FAA to use AI to help solve ATC problems.
Related articles
- Boeing awash in FAA certification requirements
- FAA proposes ways to speed up certification
- At long last, certification for 777X appears near
- Boeing clearly behind in 777X certification
- Faster aircraft development
- Boeing’s 737 “hangover” is over
- Staffing shortages affect ATC and Boeing
- FAA begins to ease restrictions on Boeing
Boeing’s VP of Product Development, Brian Yutko, believes the industry is on the precipice of an AI revolution. Pat Shanahan believes AI will be ready in 18 to 24 months to play a major role in developing the next commercial airliner. Shanahan was a 30-year Boeing veteran across commercial and defense programs, a former deputy secretary of the US Department of Defense, and, most recently, the CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, a major supplier to Airbus, Boeing, and several defense companies.
Reader Comments Open Forum, Week of April 27
LNA’s Comments Open Forum allows Readers opportunities to comment about any post (note, we said “Post”, not any “Topic”). All comments will be held for review and Moderation per our new policy. The Open Forum enables Readers to Comment on paywall articles (to the extent the paywall preview is open to all readers).
Maintain civility and follow Reader Comment rules.
A new Open Forum will be posted weekly.
Bjorn’s Corner: Blended Wing Body Airliners. Part 7
By Bjorn Fehrm
April 24, 2026, ©. Leeham News: We are making a series of articles on the Blended Wing Body (BWB) as a potentially more efficient design for passenger-carrying airliners than the classical Tube-And-Wing (TAW) configuration.
In the sixth article last week, we discussed how the drag characteristics of the BWB and a high optimal cruise altitude have consequences for the choice of engines. The thrust lapse due to altitude is higher than for Tube-And-Wing aircraft that fly about 10,000ft lower. The JetZero Z4, therefore, needs engines adapted for high climbs and cruise conditions.
This requires engines with higher specific thrust, which means lower Bypass Ratios (BPRs). This runs counter to the development trend of modern engines, which reduce specific thrust in each generation to improve propulsive efficiency and thus lower fuel burn.
Figure 1. The JetZero Z4 BWB. Source: JetZero.
Now we look at the challenges in the structure domain for a BWB. At first glance, it should be a lighter structure than a Tube-And-Wing aircraft, as it does away with the fuselage and empennage. In reality, it’s more complicated than that.