For nearly two years, the ceiling on how many 737s Boeing could build was set by its regulator. The ceiling that gave Boeing’s stock its worst day in more than 18 months on Tuesday is set inside its own wing shop.

Chief executive Kelly Ortberg told analysts that Boeing will miss its target of about 500 737 deliveries this year and won’t reach a steady 47 jets a month until early 2027. As recently as May, executives said that would happen this summer. The company also pushed its free-cash-flow growth outlook back by a year.

Jeff Brown believes by the end of this month, this Elon Musk new AI breakthrough will collide…

With a powerful market prophecy that has correctly predicted some of the biggest market booms going back to 1950…

Giving Americans a rare and perhaps last chance to turn a small stake into an entire six-figure nest egg in the next 12-18 months.

The last time something like this happened, investors had a chance to turn a small stake of $10,000 into as much as $366,000 in just 14 months.

What’s odd is how much has cleared outside the factory. After a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 in January 2024, the FAA took the unprecedented step of capping output at 38 a month. It raised that to 42 last October and signed off on 47 in May. The Max 7 won certification during the quarter, the larger Max 10 this month, and Boeing won the Navy’s sixth-generation fighter contract. The constraint that’s left is mostly internal. Boeing builds its 737 Max wings in-house, in Renton, Washington, and Ortberg named wing production as the main thing holding the line back.

And this is a company whose last production crisis came from the opposite instinct. Before Ortberg arrived in 2024, Boeing struggled for years with problems that came from rushing rate increases at the expense of quality, and the cap that followed the door plug was meant to make it put quality ahead of speed. Facing pressure to go faster now, Ortberg said Boeing would stay disciplined.

The slow part isn’t the whole factory. Boeing delivered 161 commercial jets in the quarter — its most in any quarter since 2018 — and generated free cash flow again. The first 737 ever assembled outside Renton rolled off a new line in Everett on Monday. Not every snag is in-house, either: a supplier dispute has stalled wing production for the 777 freighter and the 767.

For two years, the number of 737s Boeing could build was a judgment the FAA made about Boeing. Now it is a measurement Boeing makes about itself, and Tuesday’s reading came in short.