Boeing delivered 47 airplanes in April, including 34 737 Maxes built in Renton, Washington, and six 787 Dreamliners built in South Carolina.

Boeing’s delivery total is nearly the same as its delivery rate in March, when it shipped 46 airplanes, but slightly lower than February, when it delivered 51 planes.

Year over year, Boeing’s April delivery total of 47 airplanes aligns with April 2025, when it delivered 45 airplanes, including 29 737 Maxes and eight 787s. In April 2024, a few months after a panel flew off an Alaska Airlines Max plane, Boeing delivered just 24 planes, including 16 Maxes and four 787s.

This year, the sharpest drop in deliveries month-to-month has come from the 737 Max. Boeing delivered 43 Max planes in February, then 33 in March and 34 in April.

The plane-maker briefly held up Max deliveries after discovering small scratches on some wires due to a machining error. Boeing has since repaired about 25 affected planes and resolved the issue, but the delay and repairs shifted some deliveries from the first quarter of the year to the second, executives told analysts at the company’s first quarter earnings call in April.

On the 787 Dreamliner program, Boeing delivered just three widebody planes in February, then bumped that number to seven in March and six in April.

That program is facing delivery delays as it waits to get the seat configurations chosen by airlines approved by safety regulators. That issue won’t affect Boeing’s production rate but has cut the number of planes shipped to customers, leaving some nearly finished planes parked.

CEO Kelly Ortberg told analysts in April that Boeing had seen “some impact to deliveries” in the first quarter of the year due to premium seat certification delays. But the company still expects to meet its goal of delivering 90 to 100 787s this year.

With April, Boeing has delivered 21 787s so far this year.

Last month, Boeing also delivered three 777 freighters and four 767s, including three to its defense division for the KC-46 tanker program.

One of those 777 freighters went to National Airlines, a Florida-based cargo carrier and charter service that celebrated its first direct Boeing order with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Everett last month.

National, which placed its order for four 777 freighters in 2024 at the Farnborough Air Show, already operates a fleet of nine 747 freighters, which are no longer in production.

Standing inside the 777’s massive interior, National’s chairman and founder Chris Alf said the carrier instead chose “the next best thing” to the 747.

Competition and milestones

Boeing delivered far fewer planes in April than its European rival Airbus, which recorded 67 deliveries last month.

But, year-to-date, Boeing surpassed Airbus, with Boeing reporting 190 deliveries through the end of April and Airbus reporting 181.

Boeing’s year-to-date deliveries have increased from the same four months last year, when it delivered 175 airplanes.

On the orders front, Boeing recorded 136 gross orders in April, far surpassing Airbus’s total of 28.

After factoring in one 737 Max cancellation and adjusting for accounting principles that move orders in and out of Boeing's backlog, Boeing's net orders for April also totaled 136.

In the first four months of the year, Boeing booked 284 orders after cancellations, marking its highest year-to-date order count since 2014, when it recorded 291 orders in that same time period.

Of Boeing’s 136 orders booked last month, 57 were for the Max, 51 for the Dreamliner and 28 for the yet-to-be-certified 777X.

This month, Boeing marked another milestone in its long-delayed 777X program, which includes two passenger variants and a freighter. Boeing flew the first 777-9 with a customer interior, the company said Friday, a shift from previous test and production planes that Boeing has been flying as it works through certification requirements with the Federal Aviation Administration.

The plane that took its maiden flight is headed to Lufthansa, one of the 777X’s launch customers.

Customers have ordered 620 777X airplanes, Boeing said in a blog post about the first flight.

Meanwhile, this week, Ortberg is set to travel with President Donald Trump to China, sparking speculation about the possibility of a large order from the country. Ortberg told analysts in April that any order from China is “100% dependent on the U.S.-China negotiations and relations.”

But he was confident that if Trump’s meeting with China’s leader Xi Jinping resulted in an agreement “at the country level,” that deal would include some aircraft orders.

“President Trump has been very focused on supporting us in international campaigns and he’s been very successful in doing that,” Ortberg said. “So I think that’s a meaningful opportunity for us.”

He stopped short of detailing how many planes China might order but said “it’s a big number.”

Boeing’s commercial backlog grew from 6,127 planes at the end of March to 6,216 at the end of April.

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