Boeing Stock Pops as Korean Air Doubles Fleet. Why Its Jet Orders Are Now Soaring.

Korean Air operates 108 Boeing jets. It’s ordering 103 more. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg)

Boeing stock rose Tuesday after Korean Air ordered more jets.

It’s another sign that commercial airliner demand remains robust.

Shares of Boeing rose 3.5%, closing at $234.83, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

The move came after Boeing announced a 103-plane order from Korean Air, including 20 777 jets, 25 787 jets, 50 737 jets, and eight 777 freighters. It’s a large commitment to Boeing. Korean Air operates 108 Boeing jets. (It has about 50 Airbus jets in service.)

The order would be worth some $20 billion at list prices for planes. Boeing, however, doesn’t post list prices for planes any longer. Prices for jets are negotiated airline by airline, and large carriers don’t really pay list prices.

“This agreement with our longstanding partners, Boeing and GE, marks a pivotal moment for Korean Air,” said Korean Air CEO Walter Cho in a news release. “Acquiring these next-generation aircraft is the core of our fleet modernization strategy.”

GE Aerospace engines power the jets. Its shares were flat in premarket trading.

For Boeing, selling more jets is good news, but its stock doesn’t always react to order numbers. Selling planes is the regular course of business. Through July, airlines have ordered almost 700 jets, up from about 230 planes over the same span of 2024.

Growth is another positive, but Boeing has a lot of orders already booked. It lists unfilled orders of more than 6,500 planes. Boeing’s official backlog, which makes some accounting adjustments, is just under 6,000 planes. That is more than a decade of business at current build rates.

The challenge for Boeing will be to build more planes faster. The company has made some progress on that front. Boeing is making 38 787 MAX jets a month, the limit allowed by the FAA. Management hopes to increase that rate to about 42 a month by the end of the year.

Coming into Tuesday trading, Boeing’s stock was up about 28% so far this year. Investors have been encouraged by the company’s improving quality and production rates.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com