Boeing (BOE, Washington National) has removed the final B737-8 from long-term storage at Moses Lake, dating back to the type's global grounding in 2019.
An internal report from Boeing News Now, accessed by FlightGlobal, announced the occasion, saying that all MAX jets stored since 2019 are now reactivated for delivery. It added that the storage recovery, which Boeing has referred to as “shadow factory” rework, involved almost half a thousand B737-8 and B737-9 aircraft.
The B737 MAX line was grounded between March 2019 and November 2020 in the United States, with other countries taking longer, following the 2018 Lion Air and 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crashes. This was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, with airlines deferring aircraft deliveries due to weakened demand.
The worldwide grounding resulted in a considerable backlog for Boeing, as it initially kept producing the jets, despite them being undeliverable. This forced the manufacturer to store the assembled aircraft in several facilities, including San Antonio Lackland, Victorville, and the Seattle region.
The report identified the final airframe as an undelivered B737-8, line number 7813, built for Air China (CA, Beijing Capital). According to ch-aviation data, the aircraft, then registered B-20DJ (msn 60923), was first flown in November 2019 but was sent to storage directly afterwards.
ch-aviation can verify that a B737-8 with the temporary US registration N56807 was flown out of Moses Lake on August 12, bound for Victorville. It had the same flight callsign as previously assigned to B-20DJ. Air China said in its half-yearly report that it was planning to add eight B737s in the second half of 2025, none in 2026, and a further 12 in 2027. It currently operates seventeen B737-700s, twenty-eight B737-8s, and eighty-seven in-house B737-800s in terms of its B737 fleet.
Boeing’s chief financial officer, Brian West, reiterated during a recent company earnings call that the manufacturer ended the second quarter of 2025 with about 20 pre-2023 B737-8s still in inventory, all destined for Chinese customers.
“We now expect to complete the rework on these airplanes and shut down the shadow factory in the third quarter,” he said.
As of July 31, 2025, Boeing’s data shows unfulfilled orders of the B737 MAX family totalling 4,856 aircraft. It has delivered 243 units of the type so far, against its target of over 400 aircraft this year.
