SEOUL, South Korea: A second Boeing jet intended for use by a Chinese airline was heading back to the US on Monday, flight tracking data showed, in what appears to be another victim of the tit-for-tat bilateral tariffs launched by President Donald Trump in his global trade offensive.
The 737 MAX took off from Boeing’s Zhoushan completion center near Shanghai on Monday morning and was heading toward the US territory of Guam, data from flight tracking website AirNav Radar showed.
Guam is one of the stops such flights make on the 5,000-mile (8,000-km) journey across the Pacific between Boeing’s US production hub in Seattle and the Zhoushan completion center, where planes are ferried by Boeing for final work and delivery to a Chinese carrier.
On Sunday a 737 MAX painted with the livery for China’s Xiamen Airlines made the return journey from Zhoushan and landed at Seattle’s Boeing Field.
It is not clear which party made the decision for the two aircraft to return to the US.
Trump this month raised baseline tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent. In retaliation, China has imposed a 125 percent tariff on US goods. A Chinese airline taking delivery of a Boeing jet could be crippled by the tariffs, given that a new 737 MAX has a market value of around $55 million, according to IBA, an aviation consultancy.
The plane flew from Seattle to Zhoushan just under a month ago.
Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The return of the 737 MAX jets, Boeing’s best-selling model, is the latest sign of disruption to new aircraft deliveries from a breakdown in the aerospace industry’s decades-old duty-free status.
The tariff war and apparent U-turn over deliveries comes as Boeing has been recovering from an almost five-year import freeze on 737 MAX jets and a previous round of trade tensions.
Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say.
Second Boeing jet starts return from China as trade war with US escalates
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Second Boeing jet starts return from China as trade war with US escalates
- Confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties, analysts say
More than 9,000 flights canceled as major winter storm bears down across much of US
- “Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X
DALLAS: More than 9,000 flights across the US set to take off over the weekend have been canceled as a major storm expected to wreak havoc across much of the country threatens to knock out power for days and snarl major roadways.
Roughly 140 million people were under a winter storm warning from New Mexico to New England.
The National Weather Service forecast warns of widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina.
Forecasters say damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.
Ice and sleet that hit northern Texas overnight were moving toward the central part of the state on Saturday, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said.
“Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X.
Low temperatures will be mostly in the single digits for the next few nights, with wind chills as low as minus 24 Celsius.
About 68,000 power outages were reported across the country at 8 a.m. ET, about 27,600 of them in Texas. Snow and sleet continued to fall in Oklahoma.
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about a foot of snow from Washington through New York and Boston, the weather service predicted.
Temperatures reached minus 34 C just before dawn in rural Lewis County and other parts of upstate New York after days of heavy snow.
Governors in more than a dozen states sounded the alarm about the turbulent weather ahead, declaring emergencies or urging people to stay home.
