3 airlines ground flights over Boeing woes

Airlines are planning for the possibility that Boeing’s beleaguered 737 Max commercial jetliners will remain out of commission late into the fall as the company works to fix a host of technical problems that have rendered the planes grounded since early March.

The three U.S. airlines that operate Max jets — American, United and Southwest — announced in recent days they will cancel 737 Max flights through Nov. 2, Nov. 3 and Oct. 1 respectively, affecting hundreds of flights every day. The new cancellation dates reflect a significant revision from an expected summer timeline presented as a conservative estimate.

The airlines are waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration to sign off on a Boeing-designed software fix for a flight control system that played a role in two deadly crashes. That fix was originally expected to be delivered no later than April, according to an FAA directive issued in early March, but the process has been complicated by the discovery of other technical problems.

A Boeing official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the company now expects to submit all of its required software updates for approval by the end of September. That could pave the way for the jets to return to regular flight in November, the Boeing official said. American Airlines executives say the company remains confident that the plane will be recertified to fly before the end of the year.

That timeline assumes, however, that regulators do not find additional problems with the jet or its related software fixes. The FAA has declined to offer a firm timeline or even estimate when it expects to lift its grounding order for the Max.

“The FAA is following a thorough process, not a prescribed timeline, for returning the Boeing 737 Max to passenger service,” an FAA spokesman said Sunday. “The FAA will lift the aircraft’s prohibition order when we deem it is safe to do so.”

Regulators around the globe grounded the 737 Max commercial jetliners soon after a Boeing Max jet went down in Ethiopia in early March, killing 157 people. A similar crash the previous October killed 189 people in Indonesia.

The grounding has taken a sharp financial toll on U.S. airlines and their customers. Flight cancellations are expected to affect about 115 flights per day for American Airlines, 150 flights per day for Southwest, and about 5,000 flights for United during the expected grounding.