By Dan Catchpole

Boeing said on Tuesday that it had delivered 45 airplanes in January, up from 30 deliveries the previous month and the most deliveries in a month for the U.S. planemaker since 2023.

The deliveries included 40 737 MAX aircraft, up from 25 delivered in the same month a year ago, when a mid-air blowout on a nearly new Alaska Air 737 MAX 9 grounded the model and brought Boeing under scrutiny from federal regulators.

It was Boeing's busiest January for deliveries since 2019. It was also the company's first full month of production since a seven-week strike last fall halted most of its commercial airplane production.

Aircraft deliveries are closely watched by Wall Street because planemakers collect the majority of their payment when they hand over jets to customers. 

It delivered seven 737 MAX jets to United Airlines, five to Southwest Airlines and seven to unidentified Chinese airlines, according to the company.  

According to Cirium Fleet Analyzer and flight records on FlightRadar24, Boeing delivered 737 MAX aircraft to Shenzhen Airlines, 9 Air, Shandong Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Xiamen Airlines, and two to Air China. 

Boeing also delivered four 787s, including the first 787 to TAAG Angola, and one 777 freighter to Ethiopian Airlines.  

Boeing booked 34 orders for 737 MAX to unidentified customers and two 777 freighter orders, also to unidentified customers, for a total of 36 new orders, up from 27 orders during the same month a year ago. It did not record any cancellations.

After adjusting for accounting standards, Boeing added 42 orders to its contracted backlog: 33 737 MAX jets, two 777 freighters and seven 787s.

That is down from 142 gross orders in December, including 30 787 orders for flydubai and 100 737 MAX orders from Turkey's Pegasus Airlines, a longtime Airbus customer.

As Boeing works to stabilize commercial jetliner production in the United States, a Boeing executive told Reuters on Monday that there is not enough demand in India to justify opening a final assembly line in the country.

(Reporting by Dan Catchpole in Seattle; editing by Gerry Doyle)