A Monument to the Death of America: The Boeing 777X
Bloated. Overbudget. Repeatedly delayed. Entirely unnecessary. Literally falling apart. The crown jewel of the American commercial fleet. The Everything Plane. The Boeing 777X.
Every time I drive to or from SeaTac, off the side of I-5 I’ll be able to see Boeing’s large test hangar at Boeing Field, always lit up brightly and occasionally even open to a view of the inside. Fairly frequently in more recent months, there’s been one specific plane sitting outside, time after time: a Boeing 777X in Boeing’s blue test livery.
Not that far from my wife’s apartment, in Everett, Washington; taking a drive through town will take you past Boeing’s large (and partially defunct) production facilities, where you will see several 777X aircraft - three in Boeing livery and a long line of them unfinished and unpainted.
These are the two places in the world you are able to see the 777X on the ground. At multiple points over the testing process, they were the only places you’d see the aircraft at all, even, with the test aircraft having been grounded for periods in 2022, 2024, and 2025. My personal take is that I’m not gonna believe it’s going to ever be in commercial airline service until I see it in commercial airline service.
Considering what we know about the last major development at Boeing, the 737 MAX series, one has to ask: how did they fuck it up again?
Starting internally in the late 90s (the specific time window on this is pretty unclear) and publicly disclosed in February 2002, after the launch of the 777 and merger with McDonnell Douglas was completed, Boeing formalized their future plans with the so-called Yellowstone Project: a midsize airliner to replace both the 737 and 757 (called the Y1), a 250- to 350-seat airliner to replace the 767 (called the Y2), and a widebody airliner to replace the 777 and 747. As the 767 was the oldest of the airliners being replaced here (the 737 Next Generation had just been introduced, and the 747-400 was barely ten years old, compared to the 767 having been introduced in 1982), Y2 was developed first, and in January 20031, Boeing announced the 7E7, later renamed to the 787. The 787 is a perfectly cromulent airliner that is not the focus of this piece, having been introduced in 2011 with significant bumps along the way that have mostly been ironed out.
Indeed, though, those bumps in the development of a new airliner, combined with what Boeing management saw as a failure to develop new engine technology, convinced Boeing to shift strategies - rather than replace airliners, it’s simply going to upgrade them, in a sense. Boeing had spent all of 2010 and the first half of 2011 telling airlines, investors, and the public that they were still going to make a whole new, ground-up airplane - going as far as CEO Jim McNerney speaking publicly confirming as such that February, even if slightly mealy-mouthed about it. Presumably, behind the scenes, Boeing was being extremely cautious about how to move forward with the 737 family in general. Their grip on the American aviation industry was slipping rather dramatically, with the rapid consolidation of the remaining legacy carriers almost entirely eliminating the concept of an “all-Boeing” fleet. Delta, whose fleet was exclusively American-made from 1925 until 1991 and then again from 1995 onwards, had just acquired a large fleet of A320s and A330s from their merger with Northwest Airlines, and was apparently pleased enough with them to immediately order more (though that could have just been the urge to ditch the fifty-year-old DC-9s). United Airlines was in the midst of merging with Continental Airlines, whose all-Boeing fleet would be mixed into United’s A320-heavy domestic fleet. US Airways (whose merger with American was still two years out) had converted to majority-Airbus in the 2000s, and Hawaiian had also started transitioning from the 767 to the A330. Two stalwarts remained, at least as Boeing saw it: Alaska Airlines (who had essentially been frotting in a corporate sense with Boeing for decades at this point, both being Seattle-based concerns) and American Airlines (who had tested the waters with the A300, but was apparently unconvinced and had gone back to only ordering Boeing aircraft by 1990).
In December 2010, Airbus had launched the A320neo (new engine option) family. This aircraft was virtually everything the airlines wanted - a fuel-efficient, midsize, single-aisle airliner, providing extreme versatility in terms of routes. This was reflected in the orders - by June 2011, Airbus had over 1,000 orders for the aircraft, setting an all-time record for orders for an airliner. Boeing, presumably sensing the writing on the wall, had started using words like “might” with regards to developing a re-engined 737.
The five-alarm fire came on July 20th, 2011, when American Airlines’ parent company AMR, considered an intense corporate partner to Boeing, announced the largest aircraft order in history - 100 firm 737 orders, and 260 firm orders of both the A320ceo and A320neo. Also included was a theoretical “order” of 100 re-engined 737 aircraft - a variant of an aircraft that Boeing hadn’t even decided on making yet, let alone announced. A month later, desperate and backed into a corner, Boeing approved the development of and announced the 737 MAX aircraft, intending for the plane to have marginally better range and fuel consumption than the A320neo, at the expense of cost (the project was projected to cost twice as much as the A320neo, and, reportedly, analysts think it ended up costing twice as much as that. Settling the various issues the 737 MAX would end up having after its rollout, namely its tendency to fly itself into the ground, would cost them a reported 60 billion dollars in indirect costs, making it the most expensive corporate blunder in history, not including the $2.5b fine for fraud.) and at the expense of the Y1 project entirely, with it being cancelled at the same time the MAX was greenlit.
After the approval of the 737 MAX program, Boeing had a different beast to tackle. In response to the 787, Airbus had announced the A350 XWB, an aircraft that seemed capable of filling not only the role of the 787, but the long-haul 777-300ER fleet, as well. They had spent 2011 working on an equivalent for the 777, which eventually was announced at the 2013 Dubai Airshow as the next generation of Boeing’s widebody offerings, utilizing the same technologies introduced in the 787 and widely considered the conclusion of the Y3 project and therefore Yellowstone in general, meaning Yellowstone, a project to build three all-new airplanes, had built one all-new airplane and three bastard children. The project was projected to cost “over $5 billion” and was scheduled for an entry to service in 2019. At the Air Show, Boeing gathered a total of 259 orders at a projected cumulative value of $95b, making it the most expensive commercial airliner at launch in history. Zero orders were placed by any American airline or leasing firm - the vast majority (225 out of 259) were ordered by Emirates and Ethiad (both of the UAE) and Qatar Airways.
The 777X, unlike its predecessor, was not designed in consultation with the airlines potentially looking to purchase it. It was designed with new technologies in mind, including the new folding wingtip, which was added to the design after launch.
A mixture of new technologies as well as the cost of stretching the aircraft in general meant that the cost of the aircraft to airlines had, indeed, ballooned to seemingly unsustainable levels, as mentioned above. The airliner would overtake the 747-8i as the longest commercial airliner, and the 777-9 could hold up to 426 passengers, short of the 747-8’s maximum (467) but greater than the 747-400 (416). This is, notably, greater than the A350-1000’s 369, which should make it a shoe-in with airlines.
Oh, right. The cost. The cost, which, in fact, outweighs the additional revenue from those passengers, at least if the airlines’ reaction is anything to go off of. Indeed, the bulk of 777X orders coming from cash-heavy middle eastern carriers should not escape you - these are the same airlines that continue to operate and love their A380s (namely Emirates), because their customers are numerous enough and rich enough to justify the high costs of continuing to operate them, despite European and Asian carriers almost entirely dumping the type. The American product here is, quite literally, a luxury good designed more for vanity purchase by rich oil benefactors than as a viable commercial airliner.
All of this sounds like good reason for airlines to totally ignore it in favor of the A350 (the A350-1000 is nearly $90m less per unit than the 777X at sticker price, which, notably, does seem to be what Boeing is charging carriers). And it is! The A350 has lodged 782 orders from 63 airlines in the time Boeing has scrounged together 501 orders from 13 airlines (which is even more damning than the raw number of orders, in my eyes). But don’t worry - there’s another major reason, too!
It doesn’t fuckin’ work.
Boeing’s track record is a bit scarred at the moment, shall we say. The 737 MAX can’t stop having problems ranging from killing several hundred people to doors blowing out mid-flight, but it does continue day-to-day service mostly without issue. The 777 itself is largely dead, as a passenger airliner - the last 777-300ER, built in January 2020 for China Southern Airlines, stored for 5 years, was delivered to Ethiopian a couple months ago with the last 777-300ER built having been delivered to Aeroflot in 2021. The 747 is entirely dead, with production of freighters ending in 2023. The 767 has been out of passenger production since 2018. Production of the 787 has been marred with issues since Boeing opened their South Carolina production facility - expressly opened in South Carolina due to its low unionization rates - and issues have only increased since production was shifted entirely to the non-union plant in 2021. The only passenger airliners Boeing has in production at this point are the 737 MAX and 787, two airliners plagued with production issues. Boeing Commercial Airplanes is, at this point, a company primarily delegated to building freighters (767-300F and 777F) and, more importantly to their bottom line, military aircraft (E-7 & P-8 among 737 derivatives and KC-767s, KC-46s, and E-767s for 767 derivatives.)
Naturally, the good business move would be for your new flagship aircraft to be something that works and is safe. Indeed, Boeing has emphasized the lack of the 737 MAX’s troublesome MCAS system on the 777X, so they clearly realize this.
Unfortunately, accomplishing that goal escapes them.
In 2019, before the aircraft’s maiden flight, Boeing and the FAA were conducting pressurization tests on the test aircraft’s fuselage. In the middle of the ultimate load test, where engineers were testing whether or not the aircraft would be able to survive if pushed to its ‘ultimate load’, i.e. the maximum it’s designed to withstand, when the airframe reached 99% of its ultimate load, the fuselage simply exploded.
No, really.
Okay, sure, “exploded” is obviously uncharitable. The airframe ruptured in the center fuselage, creating a crack that instantaneously spread up to a passenger door, causing it to blow out in an explosive decompression scenario.
This is still, regardless of how I phrase it, not great.
Despite this, the FAA did not require Boeing re-take and actually pass the test, instead allowing them to simply show evidence of the engineering steps taken to reinforce that area of the fuselage and passing it based off of that. I’m not a fan of this for reasons you can probably ascertain, but, we press on.
Due to a mix of the 737 MAX investigation and the pandemic, testing and rollout slowed fairly significantly after the plane’s maiden flight (one day after the second fatal 737 MAX crash, for posterity). By 2021, however, the aircraft was back in the air and on its way to type certification with the FAA. This apparently didn’t go swimmingly - in June 2021, the Seattle Times reported on a letter sent to Boeing by the FAA on May 13th, wherein the FAA told Boeing that, due to a litany of concerns with test flights including a December 2020 event involving a severe “uncommanded pitch event” (the plane pitching up or down without any input from crew) as well as incomplete software for controlling the aircraft, the FAA would not even approve any further test flights without a course correction from Boeing, and type certification wasn’t going to happen until well into 2023. The software issue was particularly poignant, as previous reports of emails disclosed to a US Senate committee had discussed Boeing utilizing the same software outsourcing and production methods linked to the 737 MAX, as well as employees complaining about a generalized focus on cost-cutting on both the MAX and 777X programs.
In 2022, for undisclosed reasons, Boeing pushed their projected type certification date back further into 2024. Later that year, it was disclosed that a significant technical issue with one of the GE-built engines had shut down the testing and certification process entirely. It’s not clear when these test flights resumed, but the best guess is sometime around early 2023, at which point things progressed smoothly enough, but type certification was still a distant hope at best.
By early 2024, Boeing was telling customers to expect delivery in 2025. Lufthansa, the plane’s launch customer, was thinking 2027 was a more realistic target. That seems to have been warranted, as in August, Boeing once again shut down the entire test program after discovering cracks in load-bearing components holding the engine to the aircraft, initially on one test aircraft and then, after inspecting all of the test airframes, on the entire fleet of aircraft.
The next month, Boeing essentially fell apart for a little while. On September 13th, International Association of Machinists workers representing Boeing laborers on the west coast voted to reject a contract proposed by Boeing, 95% to 5%, and immediately went on strike as a result. By October 8th, negotiations between the IAM and Boeing had broken down entirely as Boeing continued to lose an estimated $50m per day as a result of the work stoppage. On October 11th, Boeing announced that they would be laying off 10% of all employees and delaying the 777X even further into 2026, as well as killing the 767 freighter by the end of 2027. Emirates, at this point elbow deep in 262 777X orders, was quite mad, though what transpired after the airline CEO publicly lambasted the airplane maker is unclear.
The IAM reached a new agreement with Boeing on November 4th, with union members voting to ratify a new contract (although with only 60% of the vote). While Boeing had narrowly avoided having their credit rating reduced to “junk” status in October, the strike still cost them an estimated nearly $10b. Despite all this, this was the first reprieve the company has had in months.
By the time January 2025 rolled around, the 777X had its first test flight to and from Boeing Field. This test flight actually happened while myself and my girlfriends, Liz and Emma, were at the Costco just off of Boeing Field, where we happened to see the test 777-9 on a final that took it directly over that parking lot. It was at that point that I realized that holy shit, this thing still isn’t in service yet, which put the idea for this article in my head.
The 777X project has, to this date, likely cost Boeing somewhere in the $25bn range.
In the aftermath of the 737 MAX disaster, a lot of ideas as to why it happened were tossed around. One of the quickest to crop up - and one that eventually was written in the FAA report on the disaster - was that corporate management, which had moved from Washington to Chicago in 2001, had lost touch with engineers and builders on the ground, and had developed a warped, faulty sense of safety culture in the process, putting significant focus on cost-cutting in all respects without any outside input from those who actually design and build the planes. It was an idea that had cropped up before, specifically with regards to the aforementioned issues at their non-union plant in South Carolina. With their entire commercial portfolio in a nosedive, producing essentially nothing but 737 MAXes (the 787 is still in production, but the actual number being built is dismal), you have to wonder if their plan to move those corporate headquarters even further from production facilities and closer to the Pentagon is something of a tacit admission of having their priorities out of whack, but instead of fixing it, simply shifting to a much more defense-focused portfolio.
With Alaska set to be the last all-Boeing legacy carrier domino that falls after announcing they would operate a flagship long-haul route using Hawaiian's A330s even while Boeing’s tongue is still down their throat, with all-Boeing non-legacy carrier Southwest in a freefall of their own, with American, United, Delta, Spirit, Allegiant, and Frontier all itching to order more Airbus aircraft for their domestic and long-haul networks, one must consider the fact that the 777X failing entirely and being cancelled would be one hell of a swan song for a company that hasn’t produced a truly new design since 2003. But hey, at least they'll be happy to sell you a full range of merchandise from the planes they'll probably never build.
Even assuming it is launched (which, admittedly, is likely to happen if only due to the mounting program costs), the project will have culminated in a questionably-functional long-haul aircraft that serves mostly as a vanity purchase for extremely wealthy corporations in the middle east serving a customer base of extremely wealthy oligarchs and the slave labor they import into the region, with it being totally unsalable to most international airlines and every last domestic airline in the United States. Truly, that’s a hell of a far cry from the crowd of 100,000 that came out to see the 777 launch in 1994 - but also, isn’t it just a poetic series of circumstances for the newest American commercial airliner?
For now, though, I think all I can say is that if it’s Boeing, I’m not all that interested in going. ■
The 7E7 was actually the second Y2 concept, after it integrated an earlier project to develop a near-sonic delta-wing airliner called the Sonic Cruiser. The airliner, announced in March 2001, flopped pretty much immediately when airlines realized it would be rather expensive. The post-9/11 travel slump pretty much killed airline interest entirely, which is when Boeing decided to kill it and make the 7E7 their new aircraft in that class.