Boeing Loss IDR 26 Trillion Due To Starliner Aircraft Program

Boeing lost due to the Starliner aircraft program (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA Boeing, an aircraft manufacturer from the United States, suffered a lot of losses during the CST-100 Starliner program. The latest loss comes as Boeing seeks to repatriate Starliner to Earth. Reporting from Spacenews, the document Boeing submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on July 31 explains that the company has taken additional costs. Boeing requires $125 million (Rp2 trillion) for Starliner purposes. This aircraft experienced a helium leak so that its driving engine died upon arrival at the International Space Station (ISS). Although the plane has been repaired, Boeing, which collaborated with NASA, is still trying to solve the problem.

Overall, Boeing bears losses of up to 1.6 billion US dollars (Rp26 trillion) just to carry out the Crew Air Test (CFT) mission for Starliner aircraft. Most of the losses came from Starliner's flight test failure in 2019. Last year, the company suffered a loss of 288 million US dollars (Rp 4.6 trillion) because Starliner had not yet been completed. With this amount of loss, Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun said that this year's quarter was disappointing.

"We expect the fixed price development program to remain unstable until we complete the development phase and switch to a mature long-term franchise program," Calhoun said. The Starliner program is still very long and there may be other losses in the future. What's more, Starliner-1's first operational mission has been postponed from February next year to August in the same year. "There is still a risk that we may record additional losses in the coming period," Boeing said in a document submitted to the SEC. The company did not estimate the amount of losses they might receive in the future. To date, Boeing and NASA are still conducting ground testing and have yet set a date of Starliner's return. NASA still has to review data from ground-based pilot tests, then conduct an institutional level review before setting a date.