US airlines visit Boeing as FAA awaits 737 upgrades

chicago/washington — Teams from the three US airlines that own 737 MAX jets headed to Boeing’s factory in Renton, Washington, to review a software upgrade, as US regulators prepared to receive and review the fixes in coming weeks.

The factory visits indicated Boeing may be near completing a software patch for its newest 737 following a Lion Air crash that killed 189 people in Indonesia last October. This month, a second deadly crash involving an Ethiopian Airlines MAX in Addis Ababa triggered the fleet’s worldwide grounding.

Timing for when passenger flights will resume remained uncertain. Boeing has come under global scrutiny along with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the agency that must approve the software fix and new training.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines, the world’s largest operator of the MAX, began parking its fleet at a facility in Victorville, California, at the southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert, to wait out the global grounding. Southwest has 34 of

the jets; United Airlines has 14 and American Airlines has 24.

Acting administrator Dan Elwell told lawmakers last week that the FAA expected Boeing would complete its upgrade as early as March 25, kicking off the approval process. An FAA spokesman said Saturday that the agency expects to receive the software fix early next week. —