The Boeing 737 Max is finding a second life as an airliner-turned-private jet. But customers still ask about its infamous 20-month grounding.
- Boeing has a lucrative side business in which it sells commercial jets as private jets to ultra-wealthy travelers.
- Boeing Business Jets can be found in the fleets of billionaires, heads of state, and national governments.
Airlines are not the only Boeing customers eager to buy up the 737 Max aircraft.
A small percentage of Boeing's yearly sales are not made by airlines but by ultra-wealthy individuals, national governments, and heads of state looking to buy some of the world's largest private jets. And each of Boeing's commercial airliners has its own private jet variant, known as Boeing Business Jets.
One aircraft that Boeing says is primed to be a best seller is the 737 Max, or the Boeing Business Jet 737 Max in airliner-turned-private-jet parlance.
"I wish we could build more airplanes because we seem to have the demand for it, in the near term," JD Detwiler, president of Boeing Business Jets, told Insider. "It's the future for BBJ and you're going to see a lot of additional orders here, hopefully, in the next year or so."
In 2021, Boeing landed two orders for the BBJ 737 Max, showing that the wealthy are just as willing as airlines to trust the aircraft after a 20-month grounding by global regulators. Expected customers for the aircraft include the approximately 200 current owners of BBJ 737 aircraft that may want to upgrade to a newer Max and take advantage of its cost-saving economics and lower operating costs.
Three of the four Max variants are currently for sale as Boeing Business Jets. Only two, however, are currently certified including the Max 8 and Max 9. The Max 7 variant is scheduled to be certified in 2022 while the Max 10 is on track for a 2023 certification.
Max aircraft range in price from $99.7 million for the smallest Max 7 to 134.9 million for the largest Max 10. Airlines typically never pay the published list price because they are frequent customers but it's unknown how much a price break an ultra-high-net-worth buyer might receive when negotiating with Boeing, if any.
The timeline between purchase to flying passengers for a given BBJ 737 Max is around two and a half years, Detwiler said, factoring in 12 months to build the aircraft, three months to install auxiliary fuel tanks to give the aircraft its extra range capabilities, and another 12 months to complete the interior. The first two BBJ 737 Max aircraft only entered service with their owners in 2021.
Boeing only builds the aircraft and delivers them to customers. Auxiliary fuel tanks are installed by Aloft AeroArchitects in Delaware while interior completion can be performed by licensed BBJ interior completion centers, including the likes of Comlux in Indianapolis, Indiana, or AMAC in Basel, Switzerland.
Boeing also expects to soon land business jet orders for its newest commercial aircraft, the $442.2 million 777X that's soon to be the world's largest twin-engine aircraft once certified.
The 777X will be the largest Boeing Business Jet that customers can buy new once the Boeing 747 exits production later this year. The high price tag, however, will likely mean that the aircraft is outside of the budget for most individual shoppers.
Even with Boeing putting one of its darkest periods behind it, Boeing Business Jet leadership says that customers still ask about the grounding. But with a full year's worth of largely uneventful Max flights and airlines once again spending billions to acquire the aircraft, the wealthy are primed to fall in love with the Max.
"We saw it first with the commercial return to service, a lot of our customers in the US, for instance, saw that customers love the Max, they feel very safe in the Max, and I think that our airline customers, in particular, love the efficiency of the Max," Detwiler said.