Boeing’s Quarter-End Delivery Push Hit by Coast-to-Coast IT Outage

Boeing’s commercial and military aircraft production was significantly disrupted on Monday June 29, the final day of its second financial quarter, when an unplanned IT outage knocked out computer systems across factories from Washington to Florida. The disruption hit during Boeing’s quarter-end delivery push, the cash-rich moment when the company hands over as many jets as possible and books the revenue.

Some planes did change hands, but final commercial jet inspections and the paperwork that clears a plane for delivery largely ground to a halt. The episode lands four weeks before Boeing’s next earnings report on July 28, and against a quarter that the company had been using to prove its production line was back on track.

The Last Day of the Quarter, and the Network Went Down

The outage reached across the company’s footprint. The Air Current, the aerospace outlet that broke the story, reported that jet assembly slowed to a trickle while defense and space factories sent workers home. People familiar with the issues told the publication that the disruption extended from Washington state to Florida, covering both the commercial jet business and Boeing Defense, Space & Security.

The Air Current’s dispatch, written by editor-in-chief Jon Ostrower and Julie Johnsson on June 30, called the event a coast-to-coast hit. Boeing, in a statement confirming the report, framed the failure more narrowly. The picture that emerged across two days of coverage was a single IT failure that touched nearly every corner of Boeing’s factory network on a day Boeing had circled on its calendar. For an aircraft maker, the last day of a quarter is when the largest number of customer handovers go through.

Boeing’s commercial aircraft are made at its Renton factory near Seattle, its Everett widebody plant, and at North Charleston in South Carolina, with defense work concentrated in places like St. Louis and Jacksonville. The Air Current did not single out which sites were hit hardest, only that the work stoppage ran from Washington to Florida. Jet assembly slowed to a trickle at the same moment Boeing was trying to book its end-of-quarter revenue.

What Boeing Says Happened

Boeing addressed the outage on Tuesday in a statement shared with The Air Current and re-reported by Reuters and Yahoo Finance. The company called it an unplanned IT event, said the cause was understood, and said it had no reason to believe a cyberattack was to blame. The IT team, the company added, was working to bring all systems back online. A link to the dispatch on Boeing’s coast-to-coast outage is the original report that named the scope of the failure.

Boeing did not say which sites were most affected, how long the systems were offline, or whether any Q2 deliveries would have to be rebooked into the third quarter. Reuters reported the same exchange, with Boeing declining to expand on the specifics. The Air Current’s reporting cited people familiar with the issues rather than on-the-record Boeing sources.

The Quarter-End Window Boeing Was Rushing to Hit

Quarter-end is when an aircraft maker’s books are made. Boeing records key revenue and cash benefits the moment a customer takes formal possession of a plane, so the final day of a quarter is the busiest handover day of the period. The Air Current said the disruption came on that last day, with Boeing trying to hand over as many airplanes as possible to waiting customers to boost its financial results.

Although the company was able to complete some deliveries, the publication reported, final commercial jet inspections and the paperwork that clears a plane for delivery largely ground to a halt. The Air Current called jet assembly a trickle at the affected sites. That paperwork, not the assembly itself, is the gating step that turns a built plane into recognized revenue. Without it, jets sit on the apron, finished but unbilled. The impact on the final Q2 delivery count is not yet visible; Boeing will not publish quarterly handover totals until early July.

Boeing has spent the year trying to rebuild delivery volume after a brutal stretch of safety, quality, and supply-chain problems, capped by a 2024 machinists’ strike that halted most 737 MAX production for more than seven weeks. By May, the recovery had reached a recognizable rhythm.

The May total, a 33% rise over the same month a year earlier, was the headline number Boeing pointed to as evidence the production line was healing. The Monday outage interrupted the end-of-quarter push that was supposed to convert that recovery into Q2 revenue. How much of that revenue slips into the third quarter will not be known until Boeing reports its Q2 numbers on July 28.

Boeing’s Q1 2026 Numbers Now Sit Under the Outage

The outage lands on top of a quarter Boeing had spent three months describing as a reset. For the first quarter of 2026, the company posted $22.2 billion in revenue, up 14% from a year earlier, driven mostly by the 143 commercial deliveries. Boeing reported a GAAP loss of $0.11 per share and a core loss of $0.20 per share, with operating cash flow of negative $179 million and free cash flow of negative $1.5 billion. The full breakdown sits in Boeing’s first-quarter 2026 results.

The company also booked a record $695 billion total backlog at the end of March, including more than 6,100 commercial airplanes. All three of Boeing’s operating segments closed Q1 at record backlog. CEO Kelly Ortberg framed the quarter as proof that a corner had been turned, in language that now reads as the baseline against which the June 29 disruption will be measured.

We’re building on our momentum with a strong start to the year and growing record-breaking backlog across our business, while supporting our customers with inspiring missions like Artemis II.

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing president and chief executive officer, in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings release on April 22.

Beyond the 737: Defense and Widebody Lines Stalled Too

The Air Current did not single out which programs were most affected. It said defense and space factories sent workers home, which suggests the disruption reached well beyond the 737 line in Renton, Washington.

• 737 program: 42 aircraft per month at the end of Q1 2026, with first delivery of the 737-7 and 737-10 variants anticipated in 2027.
• 787 program: stabilizing at eight aircraft per month, after receiving FAA certification for increased maximum takeoff weight on the 787-9 and 787-10.
• 777X program: in certification flight testing, with FAA approval to begin the Type Inspection Authorization 4a phase during Q1.
• Defense, Space & Security: backlog at a record $86 billion at quarter-end, with 27% of orders from customers outside the United States.
• Global Services: record $33 billion backlog, with the largest landing-gear exchange agreement in its history signed with Singapore Airlines Group during Q1.

The list covers all five Boeing production and services lines. Each one runs on its own mix of factory systems, supplier feeds, and certification workflows, and each one books revenue under different contracts. An outage that touches some computer systems and applications, in Boeing’s words, can therefore ripple unevenly.

Boeing did not say which applications failed or whether production planning, parts ordering, delivery sign-off, or factory-floor robotics were the underlying cause. The company said only that it understood the cause and was working to restore systems. The Air Current’s June 30 dispatch added that Boeing did not respond to a follow-up request for site-by-site detail before publication.

Quarter-end handovers are not the only thing the outage touched. Defense suppliers depend on Boeing’s release notes and engineering changes to keep parts flowing. Services work orders, the kind Global Services runs for airlines and the Pentagon, often live in the same enterprise resource planning backbone. Any of those that stalled on Monday will show up as backlog or schedule slippage in the weeks after the report, even if Q2’s headline delivery number absorbs most of the shock.

What the July 28 Earnings Report Now Has to Carry

Boeing’s next earnings call is set for July 28, 2026, with a conference call at 10:30 AM ET. The Q2 report was already going to be a test of how much of Q1’s momentum the company could sustain; the Monday outage adds a second question on top of that one. Investors will be looking for two things at once: how many planes Boeing ultimately handed over in Q2, and how much of the cash conversion slipped because inspections and paperwork could not finish on June 29.

The market reaction on Tuesday was muted. Boeing shares closed 0.83% higher at $216.47, then slipped to $215.30 in after-hours trading. That left the stock essentially flat on the news, with traders waiting for the July 28 print before pricing in any delivery shortfall.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Boeing IT outage happen?

Boeing said the unplanned IT outage affected its computer systems on Monday, June 29, 2026, the final day of its second financial quarter. The company confirmed the event in a statement shared with The Air Current on June 30.

Was the Boeing IT outage a cyberattack?

Boeing said in its statement that the cause of the outage is understood and that it has no reason to believe it was due to a cyberattack. The company did not identify the underlying cause publicly.

How many planes did Boeing deliver in the first quarter of 2026?

Boeing delivered 143 commercial jets in the first quarter of 2026, including 114 from the 737 program, and a total of 250 commercial jets through the end of May. The May 2026 total of 60 aircraft included 51 737 MAX jets, the strongest monthly MAX delivery pace since production restarted after the 2024 strike.

When is Boeing’s next earnings report?

Boeing’s next earnings release is expected on July 28, 2026, with a conference call at 10:30 AM ET. The report will cover the second quarter and is the first read on whether the June 29 outage moved the company’s delivery totals.