Boeing 787 Delivery Delays Deepen as GE Aerospace Struggles to Ramp GEnx Engine Output

GE Aerospace’s GEnx shortfall has derailed Boeing’s push to 10 jets per month — and CEO Larry Culp’s recovery pledge left Wall Street with more questions than answers.

GE Aerospace’s engine delivery shortfall has blocked Boeing from accelerating 787 Dreamliner production to 10 jets per month this year, Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg said May 27 at an investor conference hosted by financial firm Bernstein.

The GEnx turbofan bottleneck, compounded by ongoing delays in certifying complex business-class cabin seats, has also hampered Boeing’s ability to deliver some of the completed widebody jets from its North Charleston, S.C., production site, Ortberg said.

Boeing’s North Charleston facility is currently turning out 787s at a rate of eight jets per month. Rate 10 — the site’s current maximum output — remains the company’s year-end target, but Ortberg made clear that timeline depends on GE resolving its delivery gap first.

“We may not go to the rate [of] 10 as early as we could have had we not had the challenges,” Ortberg said. “We’ve fallen behind in delivery on engines in the first quarter.”

Boeing and GE Aerospace have developed a joint recovery plan, Ortberg said, but reaching rate 10 remains contingent on that plan materializing.

“We’ve got a recovery plan that we’re working with GE on. We’ll need to see the engine recovery plan come to fruition before we can get to rate 10, and that’ll be late in the year,” Ortberg said. “We’ve got some instabilities, still, that we’re working through.”

GE Pledges to Catch Up, Offers No Specific Timeline

GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp, speaking at the same Bernstein conference, acknowledged the GEnx holdups and pledged to ensure Boeing has an engine available each time it needs one.

“There’s no question that we want to make sure, in Charleston, that [Boeing’s] got an engine every time they’re ready to hang,” Culp said. “We are working with the supply base… to be in a position to step up.”

Culp did not provide a specific timeline for GE’s GEnx recovery, and the company offered no additional comment beyond his conference remarks. Like other engine makers, GE has been contending with supply chain and labor constraints in its effort to increase output.

Culp noted recent progress: GE Aerospace’s overall engine deliveries grew 25% year-on-year in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, GE Aerospace reported widebody engine deliveries — a category that includes the GEnx — rising more than 25% year-over-year, while total engine deliveries for the quarter rose 43% compared with the same period in 2025.

GE Aerospace’s first-quarter 2026 financial results reflected broader business strength: total orders reached $23.0 billion, up 87% year-over-year; adjusted revenue rose 29% to $11.6 billion; and adjusted earnings per share increased 25% to $1.86. The company’s total backlog exceeded $210 billion. GE Aerospace also announced a $1 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing sites and its supplier base for 2026 — its second consecutive billion-dollar domestic investment commitment — and plans to hire 5,000 U.S. workers in 2026, in addition to 5,000 hired in 2025. In Q1 2026, however, GE revised its full-year revenue growth outlook from “mid-single-digit” to “flat to low single-digit,” partly reflecting demand headwinds tied to the Middle East conflict.

Seat Certifications: Built Planes, Missing Paperwork

The GEnx bottleneck is not Boeing’s only delivery constraint. Delayed regulatory approvals for door-equipped business-class seats have separately stranded completed aircraft at the North Charleston facility.

Boeing and its seat suppliers underestimated the time required for regulators to approve those configurations, Ortberg said.

“We have quite a few of those [certifications] yet to go through this year,” Ortberg said. “The seating configurations have been very complex.”

The result is an unusual predicament — aircraft built and flight-ready, but administratively grounded.

“The seats are in the airplane; the airplanes are built. We just don’t have the paperwork allowing us to make the delivery,” Ortberg said.

Ortberg described the seat certification issue as “an important stability item for [Boeing] to go to a 10-a-month.”

The problem has had concrete consequences for airlines and passengers. Lufthansa’s Boeing 787-9 fleet, configured with its Allegris cabin featuring five distinct business-class seat variants, faced a protracted FAA certification process: only four of 28 business-class seats were initially approved for revenue service when the aircraft entered service in late 2025. The FAA certified 25 of Lufthansa’s 28 Allegris seats in March 2026, ahead of a previously delayed April 2026 target, but three seats — two Privacy seats and one Extra Space seat — remained blocked as of that certification. In February 2026, 787 deliveries fell significantly short of Boeing’s target production rate of eight jets monthly, driven primarily by the seating setbacks.

Delivery Totals and Demand Backlog

Boeing has delivered 21 787 Dreamliners in 2026 through April, according to the company’s own data. It delivered 15 787s in the first quarter — part of a broader Q1 2026 commercial total of 143 aircraft, the highest first-quarter delivery count since Q1 2019 and a 10% increase from Q1 2025. Boeing is targeting delivery of 90 to 100 widebodies by year-end 2026.

The company holds a backlog of approximately 1,103 Dreamliners, with an overall commercial aircraft backlog of approximately 6,719 planes at the end of March 2026. Demand for the type remains active: Ethiopian Airlines converted six 787-9 options to firm orders in April 2026. United Airlines ordered 300 GEnx engines in early 2026 to power its Boeing 787 fleet, positioning it as the largest prospective operator of the engine.

Expansion Plans and Long-Term Capacity

Boeing broke ground on a North Charleston site expansion in November 2025, employing more than 2,500 construction workers and representing a company investment exceeding $1 billion. Boeing plans in 2028 to open a second 787 production facility adjacent to the existing North Charleston site, a configuration the company says will enable combined production of 20 jets per month. Boeing is also studying a potential production rate of 16 jets per month by the end of the decade. The company is relocating approximately 300 engineering and technical positions from Washington state to North Charleston, consolidating 787 program engineering under one roof as production ramps.

Engine Background and Competitive Context

The GEnx is one of two powerplant options for the 787 Dreamliner family, alongside the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 XE. The GEnx-1B, developed specifically for the 787, produces thrust in the 66,500- to 76,100-pound-force range and was designed as the successor to GE’s CF6 engine. MTU Aero Engines is among the key strategic suppliers for the GEnx program. Rolls-Royce secured its first new 787 engine order in nearly three years in March 2026, for eight aircraft. GE Aerospace has dominated recent 787 engine-order activity by comparison; United’s 300-engine GEnx purchase in early 2026 far outpaced that level of Rolls-Royce engagement. LATAM Airlines received its first GEnx-powered 787-9 on Dec. 30, 2025, having previously operated 787s exclusively with earlier Trent 1000 variants.

Industry Supply Chain Pressures

The GEnx delays reflect a structural mismatch between rising airline demand and constrained aerospace manufacturing capacity. The International Air Transport Association estimated the cost to airlines of supply chain bottlenecks would exceed $11 billion in 2025, driven by excess fuel costs, additional maintenance costs, capacity shortfalls, and surplus inventory holding costs. A joint IATA and Oliver Wyman study projected that normalization of the structural supply-demand imbalance is unlikely before 2031 to 2034.

GE Aerospace reported supplier delivery improvements reaching 95% on-time performance as of mid-2025, though the company noted ongoing challenges remained.