Boeing May Not Roll Out A New (Potentially Autonomous) Airliner Until 2035; Promises To Return Cash To Investors In 2026

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expects to work through the many problems in its commercial airplane and defense businesses by 2026 and start returning cash to investors, but CEO David Calhoun said the company won’t develop a new jetliner in the next five to six years—and will only roll one out in the middle of the next decade if it has technology to significantly reduce the plane’s environmental impact compared to current aircraft.

In a presentation for investors Wednesday, Calhoun said the development of technology to improve fuel efficiency and slash carbon emissions “might be the long pole in the tent” for when it rolls out a new middle-of-the-market airliner, which analysts believe Boeing needs to compete with Airbus’ hot-selling long-range, single-aisle A321XLR. If Boeing can’t deliver much greater efficiency, on the order of at least 20%, “there won’t be an airplane,” Calhoun said.

On the most important element — the engines — he said there’s nothing in development that would deliver 20% better fuel efficiency by 2030. “I don’t think we’re going to even get to the drawing board this decade.”

It’s a substantial move to the right in the timeline for the company, which went back and forth for much of the latter half of the last decade on whether to build a new midmarket plane. Earlier this year, Calhoun seemed to suggest that design work could commence in a few years.

Boeing’s next airliner may be designed to fly autonomously, Calhoun said, though it may not operate without pilots from the start. He said that Wisk, a California-based company in which Boeing owns a controlling stake that’s developing a four-seat autonomous electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft intended to serve as an air taxi, is one of the company’s key avenues for developing autonomous flight technology.

Calhoun said he doesn’t expect air taxis to be big sellers and is “not going to move the needle a whole bunch,” but bringing Wisk’s aircraft to market will “educate the FAA” on how to certify the safety of autonomous aircraft, paving the way for the use of the technology in commercial aviation in higher-impact ways.

Calhoun and CFO Brian West sought to provide Wall Street with a detailed forecast for the first time since before the grounding of the 737 MAX in 2019, elaborating on their declaration in their discussion of third-quarter earnings last week that they consider free cash flow to be the key metric for the company’s turnaround.

Boeing expects to deliver the last of the 737 and 787 airliners that have been sitting in storage in 2025, removing the heavy financial drag of storing and refitting them. West said he expects that to enable Boeing’s commercial airplanes division to return to being a “cash juggernaut,” generating $6 billion in free cash flow. Together with Boeing’s defense division swinging back to positive cash flow as it works through costly problems with fixed-price government contracts, the company expects to generate roughly $10 billion a year in free cash flow by the 2025-26 time frame, enabling it to pay down debt, normalize the balance sheet and begin to return cash to shareholders again.

Given that Boeing is still sitting on an abnormally high number of aircraft—270 finished 737 MAX planes and 115 787s worth roughly $23 billion—handing them over to customers to hit its free cash flow goal will be “easy . . . even if everything else goes wrong,” analyst Ronald Epstein of Bank of America wrote in a note earlier this week questioning the company’s decision to emphasize the metric. A short-term focus on free cash flow under prior CEO Dennis Muillenburg was one of the contributors to the many troubles the company has been struggling with, including the 737 MAX grounding, 787 quality problems and losses in its defense business, Epstein pointed out. “Changing the culture that ultimately resulted in the company needing to be turned around in the first place is arguably much harder.”

Boeing hopes to raise production of the 737 MAX next year from the low 30s a month to the low 40s in the second half, and eventually to 50 a month in 2025-26, along with 10 787s a month and four of the yet-to-be certified 777X. Boeing aims to deliver 400 to 450 MAX jets next year and book $3 billion to $5 billion in free cash flow, up from a forecast for 375 deliveries this year with $1.5 billion to $2 billion in free cash flow.

Boeing shares rose 2.8% Wednesday to close at $147.41.