SEATTLE — As the world's most popular airliner, a Boeing 737 plane takes off every 15 seconds. However, Boeing almost dumped the jets. Nobody could have guessed the planes would end up accounting for half of the company's revenue, $30 billion.
First called the "Baby Boeing," the 737 plane has changed dramatically since it took its first flight in 1967. It had 85 seats. The 737 MAX 10 holds over 200.
At one point in the early 1970's, sales were slow. Boeing considered dumping it. Instead, it would go on to become the world's bestselling airliner with more than 10,500 delivered and more than 4,700 on order. In 2018, 72 percent of Boeing's deliveries were the 737.
See how the 737 has evolved over the past 52 years, how it's grown in size, the number of passengers it carries, and how far it can fly.
If those orders stopped coming in now, it would take employees at Boeing's Renton factory more than seven years to build them all.
However the MAX version of the 737 continues to be at the center of a global controversy. In the wake of two MAX crashes that killed 346 people, the MAX has been grounded since March 13.
Will MAX orders keep coming?
Puget Sound has a lot riding on the MAX which accounts for most of those pending orders.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has yet to complete a final certification flight to help verify if an upgrade to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is ready and the grounding can be lifted. The flight control feature was implicated as the cause in the two crashes. It is software found only on the 737 MAX and is designed to manipulate the horizontal stabilizer at the rear of the plane.
The company said the software was supposed to make the MAX feel like the previous models, the 737 Next Generation, a plane that has one of the best safety records in aviation.