Grounded Max has decades of use ahead: Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg

Chicago: Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg is doubling down on the beleaguered 737 Max aircraft with a prediction that the plane will reclaim its position as a single-aisle workhorse following upgrades on the grounded model.

Speaking on the first day of the Paris Air Show, the CEO reaffirmed his confidence that the Max will return to service before the end of the year and that the plane will remain the backbone of the company’s short-haul strategy for years to come.

He dismissed the notion that two deadly Max crashes in a five-month span would force Boeing to accelerate the introduction of an all-new model as a replacement.

“The long-term, multi-decade strategy hasn’t changed,” Muilenburg said on Monday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Any new aircraft in the single-aisle space, the most common category in civil aviation, remains “a much more distant decision for the next couple decades,” he said.

Boeing is betting that it can win back support from customers and the flying public for the Max, the newest version of the world's most widely used aircraft.

The alternative — amulti-billion-dollar investment in an all-new replacement — would be a risky path both financially and technically because engineering advances probably won't be sufficiently mature for another decade to justify such a huge investment.