Boeing first-quarter deliveries and orders sink after 737 Max groundings

• Boeing announced Tuesday that deliveries for all of its 737 jets fell to 89 in the first quarter, a dip from 132 last year.
• The plane maker halted deliveries of its 737 Max following the global grounding of the jets that were implicated in two fatal crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia that killed a total of 346 people.
• Total orders fell to 95 aircraft in the first quarter, a drop from 180 a year earlier. There were no new 737 Max orders in March.

An aerial photo shows several Boeing 737 MAX airplanes grounded at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 21, 2019.

Lindsey Wasson | Reuters

Boeing announced Tuesday that deliveries and new orders for all of its 737 jets fell in the first quarter.

The plane maker has halted deliveries of the 737 Max, the latest model of the popular narrow-body jet, after faulty data feeding into the aircraft's automated flight system was implicated in two fatal crashes that killed all 346 people aboard the flights. Boeing announced Friday that it's cutting production by 20 percent as it tries to find a software fix to get the planes flying again. They've been grounded since the second crash in mid-March.

Deliveries of its 737s tumbled to 89 during the first three months of the year, a dip from 132 during the same period last year. Total orders for 737s, the majority of which were for the newer Max model, fell to 95 in the first quarter, a drop from 180 a year earlier. There were no new 737 Max orders in March.