737 MAX Assembly Rate to Rise Again

Boeing chief executive officer Kelly Ortberg revealed the manufacturer is on track to increase the 737 MAX production rate from 42 to 47 aircraft per month. “We’ve passed the capstone review for rate 47,” Ortberg said in an interview before an audience at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference.

Ortber also expressed confidence that the Federal Aviation Administration would grant the airworthiness certification soon for the 737 MAX 10 variant, for which Boeing has more than 1,400 orders on its books.

The jet-builder has a multi-year backlog of orders for all variants of the twin-engine, narrow-body 737 MAX, and finally managed to increase the assembly rate to 42 aircraft per month in October 2025. The Federal Aviation Administration authorized that increase after establishing oversight of the assembly process at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., operation, to ensure the reliability and consistency of the manufacturing processes and safety standards there following the mid-air failure of the sidedoor panel on an Alaska Airlines flight.

"We're off and rolling at the 47 rate, and we should be there in the next couple months," Ortberg told the interviewer, noting that the supporting operations are already performing at a level consistent with that rate. “We’re not going to push airplanes down the production line and end up with traveled work,” he assured the listeners, meaning incomplete manufacturing steps that may degrade production standards and safety.

The next milestone will be 52 aircraft per month, which Boeing will target once it starts full operation on the fourth 737 MAX production line it has set up in Everett, Wash. That should be achieved in 2027, and beyond that rate Boeing is seen aiming to complete 63 aircraft per month.

Boeing currently lists unfilled orders for 4,872 737 MAX jets. “We’re sold out well into the next decade,” Ortberg told the Bernstein conference audience.