Farnborough Airshow kicks off: Can Boeing turn the page? Will Airbus take advantage?

One of the biggest events in the airline industry begins Monday as the famed Farnborough International Airshow kicks off just outside of London.

Farnborough alternates each year with the Paris Air Show as the flagship event for European and American aerospace. The annual shows offer the chance for plane-makers, component manufacturers, suppliers, airline customers and everyone else throughout the aviation supply chain to show off their latest products, finalize or start the process of making sales and deals, and meet to manage industry issues.

This year's show marks the third European air show since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, and there are a few big announcements and exciting products on display. Among those are a new iteration of Qatar Airways' award-winning Qsuite business-class seat and Air India's new Airbus A350 cabins.

This time, however, Farnborough begins with a radically different backdrop than the past several shows, including several conspicuous absences.

Boeing has spent nearly the entirety of 2024 in crisis following the Jan. 5 decompression aboard an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9, which occurred when a "door plug" fell from the aircraft, leaving a hole in the fuselage. The subsequent investigation has shown that the piece was removed and reinstalled by Boeing workers without crucial bolts holding it in place during manufacturing. The pilots landed the plane a few minutes later with no serious injuries among any of the passengers or crew members.

Read more: What to know about the Boeing 737 MAX 9 and the MAX series

The incident reopened intense scrutiny of Boeing that had been mostly dormant since the 737 MAX reentered service in late 2020, following a 20-month global grounding of the fleet after the second of two fatal crashes. Public attention has refocused on the plane-maker's safety and quality control processes, while everything from insignificant and routine maintenance issues to more serious mechanical issues generated breaking news headlines amid a hyperfocus on air travel during the first few months of the year.

The crisis came at a sensitive time for the plane-maker, with Boeing and European rival Airbus struggling to meet production goals amid ongoing supply chain issues stemming from the pandemic. For Boeing, ongoing development and certification delays of its new 777X wide-body program, along with the 737 MAX 7 and 10 — the smallest and largest variants of its narrow-body program — have led to mounting frustrations from airline customers.

For Boeing, the show offers a chance to reassure customers and manage relationships with vendors as it seeks to bring its commercial division back on track. In the aftermath of the door plug incident, the company implemented "safety stand downs" across its manufacturing facilities, during which it examined processes and solicited employee feedback — during a pre-Farnborough media briefing in London on Sunday, new Boeing Commercial CEO Stephanie Pope said that the company had received more than 30,000 suggestions from workers. Boeing also slowed down production rates on its 737 and 787 assembly lines as it made safety changes and dealt with supply chain challenges.

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Boeing has since developed and implemented a safety management program, which Pope said has received broadly positive feedback from airline customers. With that in place, the company is working to ramp its production rate back up to 38 737 MAX jets per month, and five 787 Dreamliners.

Now, as Farnborough begins, Boeing's focus is on production rates and certification. The plane-maker declined to bring its prototype commercial aircraft to display, saying that it was instead "concentrated on implementing our comprehensive safety and quality plan and meeting our customer commitments." The airline had brought its 777X and 737 MAX 10 test bed aircraft to the past few airshows, which has involved diverting dozens of engineers and test pilots to manage the flights and display the aircraft on the ground.

There's a glimmer of good news in that, however: Last week, Boeing was cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration to begin its certification proving flights with the 777X, a major step toward bringing the airplane to market.

At Airbus, there was good news leading into the show as well. The European plane-maker's long-awaited and oft-delayed A321XLR — an extended long-range version of its A320neo family — finally received certification by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, the FAA's European counterpart. With the FAA and other nations' regulators expected to grant reciprocal certification in the coming days and weeks, airlines that have eagerly awaited the jet are now close to beginning to take delivery of the model. Airbus will display one of the prototypes at the show.

While the 2024 show unquestionably remains one of the year's biggest aviation events, don't expect it to be a headline-grabber in the way previous shows have been.

After a few years of record aircraft orders that have filled order books at both plane-makers through at least the end of the decade, particularly from U.S. carriers, this could be a quieter air show on the order front. Still, it would hardly be an air show without at least a few sales, and there tend to be surprises at the shows every year.

TPG is on-site with team coverage of Farnborough, so stay tuned here and be sure to follow TPG on Instagram for all of the latest.