Boeing airplane orders and deliveries ticked upward in March as the 737 Max's return to service gained momentum, and some airlines flying the airplane began to look toward a possible recovery from the pandemic downturn.
Sales data released Tuesday shows that the planemaker recorded positive net orders for just the second month in a row, after more than a year of order cancellations.
And Boeing delivered 29 commercial jets in March, including the first 787 Dreamliner deliveries since October.
Boeing won 40 net orders in the month, bringing its net total for the year to 76 airplanes.
This is in contrast to rival Airbus, which in February and March had a total of 100 jet orders canceled, bringing its net order tally for the year down to minus 61 airplanes.
While Airbus is experiencing the negative impact of the pandemic-driven airline downturn, Boeing is getting an offsetting sales boost from the Max's return to service.
However, as positive as March's data is, this week's news will certainly slow Boeing's momentum.
The U.S. jetmaker won 162 new orders and had 122 orders canceled in March. All of those were 737 Maxes except for 11 anti-submarine P-8s ordered, nine for the U.S. Navy and two for the Royal Australian Air Force.
The new orders finalized last month included 100 Maxes for Southwest, 24 Maxes for Miami-based investment firm 777 Partners and 23 Maxes for Alaska Airlines.
In addition, United changed a contract for 25 Maxes to move up delivery of the airplanes, and Alaska did the same for 9 Maxes on its order book.
A Boeing official attributed its sales performance to some airlines making strategic investments to position for the recovery and a return to growth.
Still, Boeing is not escaping the pandemic's impact.
The canceled firm orders included 50 Maxes for Turkish Airlines, 26 Maxes for Hong Kong-based aircraft lessor CALC, 16 Maxes for the airplane leasing unit of China Development Bank, 6 Maxes for General Electric's airplane leasing unit GECAS, and 3 Maxes for L.A.-based Air Lease Corp.
In total, 156 Max orders have been canceled this year.
In addition, 14 Maxes were withdrawn from the order backlog because the contracts are no longer solid enough because of a lack of customer financing.
Those 14 airplanes withdrawn, along with 19 Max deliveries in March, counterbalanced the 29 net new Max orders for the month to nudge the total Max backlog slightly lower to 3,192 airplanes.
While Boeing had to take those 14 Maxes out of its official backlog, in another positive development it was able to add back in 15 orders for wide-body 777Xs and one for a 787 that had previously been too tenuous to include, either because the airline's credit was reassessed or a contract was renegotiated.
Boeing said the official 777 backlog now stands at 263, comprising 228 of the forthcoming 777X model and 35 of the older 777s.
The order backlog for all Boeing jet models is now 4,054 airplanes.
Because Airbus gained almost 3,000 jet sales over Boeing in the single-aisle jet market during the Max crisis, its total order backlog stands at 6,998 aircraft.