Boeing 737 can return to the skies
SEATTLE — Twenty months after Boeing's new 737 Max was grounded worldwide following two deadly crashes, the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday approved Boeing's fixes for the airplane and cleared the Max to return to service.
In a statement, the FAA said airlines that have parked their Max aircraft must make required maintenance and system modifications to prepare them to fly again. The agency will review each U.S. airline's Max pilot-training program. And it will inspect and issue an airworthiness certificate for every Max Boeing built after the March 2019 grounding order.
The long-delayed approval means the Max is on track to fly passengers again in the United States before year end. Jet deliveries can resume and production in Renton will begin again to ramp up, though very slowly.
Since the first Max crash two years ago, Boeing has suffered through a relentless litany of damning revelations, scathing investigation reports and discoveries of problems that delayed this moment.
As Boeing struggles to survive a historic, coronavirus-driven aviation downturn that's slashed global air travel to a quarter of what it was a year ago, the FAA announcement provides a rare lift.
Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, called the FAA's directive "an important milestone."
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun in Chicago, in a statement, said "the lives lost in the two tragic accidents" and the lessons learned from the Max crashes "have reshaped our company." The FAA's verdict that the jet is safe to fly is at least the beginning of the end of Boeing's Max crisis.
And yet, even as Boeing grapples with the logistics of modifying hundreds of planes and returning them to the sky, its future is weighed down by the massive financial hit from the grounding and the deep reputational damage from the tragic crashes.
As details of the causes of the crash tragedies surfaced over the past 20 months, Boeing's reputation for engineering excellence has been shattered, while the FAA's position as the world's arbiter of safety has been seriously undermined.
The investigations have opened an unprecedented window into Boeing's design, marketing and testing of the plane, shedding an unflattering light on many of the participants.
A low point came with the release of internal emails that revealed how the chief technical pilot at Boeing Commercial Airplanes had disparaged and deceived airline customers. Specifically, he coaxed Lion Air of Indonesia to drop its plan to have its pilots train to fly the new jet in full-motion simulators. Just 17 months later, that airline suffered the loss of 187 lives in the first Max crash.
Before the pandemic struck, the expense of building jets it couldn't deliver had drained Boeing's finances. As deliveries of the Max resume, Boeing will begin again to see revenue from the jet — though slowly at first.
Getting the total of more than 800 grounded Maxes into the air again is a massive challenge.
Boeing must help airlines get back into service the Maxes that were flying before the second crash and have been grounded since. And it must also prepare for flight the Maxes built after the grounding and then deliver them to airlines — many which are in no rush to receive planes during the downturn.
Boeing will have to find new buyers for more than 60 of the parked and undelivered Maxes, because the airlines that ordered them have canceled.
Executive Vice President Greg Smith told analysts last month that he expects delivery of about half of the 450 Maxes Boeing has in storage by the end of next year and the majority of the remaining jets in 2022.
Foreign aviation safety regulators must clear the plane before Boeing can deliver planes outside the U.S.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has said it's ready to also clear the Max to fly. Formal approval by EASA, along with the Canadian and Brazilian regulators, is expected to follow soon.
But approval to fly in China, the largest market for the 737, may depend upon an improvement in Sino-American political relations.