By Alan Charlish
WARSAW (Reuters) – Ryanair will take as many Boeing MAX 10 aircraft as it can get, the airline’s CEO told Reuters on Tuesday, reiterating his confidence in the U.S. planemaker.
Boeing, long a symbol of America’s manufacturing prowess, is in the crosshairs of regulators, politicians and airlines following a harrowing mid-air cabin panel blowout on a passenger-filled 737 MAX 9 jet operated by Alaska Airlines earlier this month.
On Monday, Boeing said it was withdrawing a request for a key safety exemption that could have allowed U.S. regulators to speed up certification of its coming 737 MAX 7, in the latest fallout from the planemaker’s ongoing crisis.
“Boeing make great aircraft, we’re very confident, we have orders for 400 of those aircraft,” Michael O’Leary told Reuters in an interview.
“Some of the U.S. airlines were saying last week ‘we might not take some of those aircraft’ – I said yesterday if the American carriers don’t want to take the MAX 10, we’ll take them, we’ll take as many as we can get, as fast as we can get.”
At a press conference, O’Leary said Boeing had been “unlucky” with the Alaska airlines incident. He said Boeing needed to improve the quality of the aircraft it was delivering, but that some of the criticism it was getting was unfair.
“I think the CEO and CFO … are getting a lot of unfair criticism for a lot of poor management on the floor in Seattle,” he told a news conference in Warsaw.
“Ultimately they are responsible, but there is weak management in Seattle… it is improving though.”
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Louise Heavens and Jan Harvey)
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