Boeing’s Zhoushan 737 MAX completion and delivery site is on track for a 2018 debut
Like a well-oiled machine,
routinely flies newly assembled and painted
“over the hill” from its busy production facility at Renton, Washington, to Boeing Field, just 5 mi. away, for final checkout and delivery.
The system, which also includes sending some aircraft to Boeing Field for painting, has operated smoothly for decades. So why, from late 2018 onward, will an increasing number of brand-new 737 MAXs fly instead in their green zinc chromate primer an astonishing 5,764 nm from the production line for completion and painting in Zhoushan, China, an island city in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai?
According to Boeing the answer is a “win-win” for both its capacity-pressed production system and its airline customers in China, which together account for about one-third of 737 deliveries. For Boeing, which is in the midst of the biggest single-aisle production ramp-up in its commercial history, the move will free up much-needed completion ramp space at its Seattle-area facilities. For Chinese operators, moving completion closer to home will significantly streamline the final delivery and customer acceptance process.
The initiative,
was officially announced later that month as Chinese President Xi Jinping made his first state visit to the U.S. Established as part of a joint venture with Comac, the new completion facility represents Boeing’s biggest single overseas commercial aircraft work venture and is the closest the company has come to opening a foreign-based airframe assembly line.
The facility, which will also include a separate Boeing-owned delivery center, will be exclusively dedicated to 737 MAXs destined for Chinese airlines. It is also a significant strategic gambit for the company, which has seen both
and
open aircraft assembly lines in China. Airbus’s Tianjin
final assembly site, established in 2009, has been expanded to include an
completion facility. Embraer, which said in 2016 it was phasing out its ERJ 145 regional jet line in Harbin, is now considering a Chinese production line for its larger E195-E2 airliner.
The total number of 737s being produced in Renton is set to climb to 52 per month in 2018 from the current output of 47. The proportion of MAX versions coming out of Renton will also quadruple from 2017: Of an estimated 520 737s due for production in 2017, only about 70 will be the MAX version; in 2018, the new family will account for about 280 of the roughly 625 737s expected to be built. And the share is projected to climb dramatically as production reaches 57.7 per month in 2019, which equates to about 690 737s, the bulk of them MAXs.
The Zhoushan site, where groundbreaking took place in May, will particularly help Boeing avoid bottlenecks both at paint shops and on the delivery ramp. It will also mitigate uncertainty over the completion and delivery process, over which Boeing has less control than the carefully structured production system. “There are many benefits for us both in terms of market access and support as the rate increases,” says Boeing. “We are targeting 57 a month in 2019, and we get into constraints to the facilities we have locally here in the Puget Sound area.”
The first aircraft will ferry to Zhoushan in the second half of 2018 after completing their “B1” Boeing production acceptance test flights. The China site will complete exterior painting, a process that currently takes up to three days at the Boeing facilities at Renton or Boeing Field. It will also oversee flight testing and be passed to the Boeing China delivery center for handover to the airline, a process that can take 3-6 weeks, depending on customer specifications.
The China site will formally start operations late next year and, although Boeing originally hoped to begin deliveries by the end of 2018, the company acknowledges that is a “sporty” schedule. The facility is expected to deliver 8-10 aircraft per month and about 100 aircraft over the course of a year. Initial aircraft will arrive from the U.S. fitted with cabin walls and ceilings, and eventually these and other internal components will also be installed in China.
