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Boeing wavers on when 737 Max will fly
Boeing reiterated its hope Wednesday that the 737 Max jetliner, grounded after two crashes, will be back in the air by the end of the year.
But Boeing was less definitive than three months ago, when it told analysts it hoped the plane would be recertified as soon as this month. That would have made it available to airlines during the holiday travel period, a time crucial to profits.
“Our top priority remains the safe return to service of the 737 Max, and we’re making steady progress,” Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement. But in a call with analysts, he indicated that the process still has a lot of steps and that getting all the Max jets built so far back in the sky will be a “multi- quarter operation.”
Several major airlines, including Southwest, American and United, suspecting that the plane’s revisions would take longer than Boeing earlier predicted, have pushed back the Max’s return in their flight schedules to early next year.
Boeing gave the update on the Max Wednesday in its third- quarter financial release. The company said it is assuming regulators will clear the plane
to return to service before the end of the year. But the company didn’t indicate whether that approval will come from one regulatory body, like the Federal Aviation Administration, or several. Some global aircraft regulators have hinted, for instance, that they may not reapprove the plane at the same time as the FAA.
Boeing was also careful to say the timing is out of its control: It’s up to regulators.
Before final approval, Boeing still must finalize the plane’s software and changes in pilot training. It needs to test the software changes in flight simulators and in aircraft with both its own and outside pilots, Muilenburg said.
“The review cycles have taken a little longer than originally planned,” he said. “There are tangible milestones being achieved, but we will still have more work to do.”
The 737 Max is the latest version of the venerable jetliner that has flown in various versions since the 1960s. The Max was grounded worldwide after an Ethiopian Airlines crash in March that killed 157 passengers and crew. It followed another accident a year ago in which a 737 Max flown by Lion Air crashed into the Java Sea, killing 189.
In both crashes, investigators’ attention has focused on flight- control software that had been put into the Max, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. It was added in the latest version in an attempt to make
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the jets feel to pilots like previous versions of the 737, even though the Max has larger engines that were repositioned on the wing, making it respond differently in some circumstances.
But instead of helping, quietly operating in the background, MCAS appears to have factored in the crashes. The system overrode the actions of pilots in both accidents, pointing the noses of their jets down as crews tried to keep the planes airborne. Ultimately, they lost the battle, and the 737s plunged from the sky. Boeing has been redesigning the system to give pilots more control, a process that has been holding up the Max’s return.
Troubles with the Max continue to dog Boeing. Muilenburg was stripped of his dual role as chairman of Boeing this month, and the Chicago- based company just replaced the head of its commercial airplanes unit, Kevin McAllister. Muilenburg is likely to face tough questioning in Congress next week, when he is scheduled to testify to a House committee for the first time about the Max.
Making matters worse, Boeing disclosed that a test pilot voiced doubts about MCAS during simulator tests in an after- hours electronic message exchange with another employee in 2016 – and didn’t turn over the information to the FAA until last week. The FAA has demanded to know why it wasn’t informed sooner.
Muilenburg didn’t offer an explanation in the call with analysts. He did say that the backlog for orders for 737s of about 4,400 planes has remained solid.