#MarvinVasquez Qatar cancels the purchase of 25 Boeing 737 and switches to Airbus
However, these were not the planes that Qatar said just a week ago it was going to buy from Boeing. The order for 160 wide-body aircraft, expandable to 210, announced in front of Donald Trump, is still underway. Monday's announcement is just a forgetfulness by Badr Al-Meer, the CEO of Qatar Airways, when he was in front of the American president: a previous order for 25 737 aircraft was canceled.
Journalists, in light of the large order from a few weeks ago, keep asking if Qatar Airways is blacklisting Airbus, recalling the sad episode of the A350 painting. Yesterday, Al-Meer not only stated that they had no issues with Airbus but that all their short-haul fleet would be from that manufacturer and that consequently, they would cancel the order for twenty-five 737Max 10 aircraft.
Interestingly, the Max10 was purchased because it was a plane “that is absolutely ideal for our regional network,” according to Stan Deal, the fleet director of Qatar Airways at the time of the announcement in 2022. Today, the reason for the return of the aircraft is that the aircraft does not fit their regional network, which is exactly the opposite.