FAA official echoes Boeing timeline for return of Max

Boeing’s fleet of 737 Max aircraft, grounded since March after two fatal crashes in just five months, should be back in the air by December, a top U.S. regulator said.

It’s not possible to give an exact date as work progresses on safety fixes to the jets, Ali Bahrami, the Federal Aviation Administration’s associate administrator for aviation safety, said during an interview Wednesday at a conference in Cologne, Germany.

While the FAA is “under a lot of pressure,” he said 737 Max jets will be returned to service “when we believe it will be safe,” after reviews of the design, flight testing and other checks. Bahrami was reluctant to provide a timeline, but when asked whether the jets would resume service this year or next, he said remarks by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg projecting a return by the end of 2019 sounded correct.

Knowing when the latest version of the 737 will fly again would help airlines contend with the disruption caused by the grounding of the narrow-body jets, Boeing’s most popular model. The FAA has said there’s no time frame to sign off on Boeing’s proposed fix for the jets.

Muilenburg said last week on CNBC that he expected the 737 Max fleet would be back in the air by the end of 2019.

American Airlines Group has kept the jets off its schedule through Sept. 3, while Southwest Airlines and United Continental Holdings are looking at resuming 737 Max flights in early August.

Boeing is finalizing a software fix for a flightcontrol system malfunction linked to the accidents involving Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, as well as proposed new pilot training.

A combined 346 people were killed in the crashes only five months apart.

The FAA isn’t the only regulator that holds sway over returning 737 Max jets to the skies.

The European Aviation Safety Agency also is examining Boeing’s changes, a process that won’t conclude until the end of July at the earliest, director Patrick Ky said in a separate interview. The agency is considering whether to require additional simulator training for flying the Max, as well as potential design changes, he said.

Boeing has cut its production rate for the model by 10 planes per month to 42. The company had earlier aimed to increase output to 57 monthly in the second half of the year.

The Chicago-based plane manufacturer faces an estimated $1.4 billion bill for canceled flights and lost operating profit at airlines if the 737 Max fleet is still grounded by the end of September, said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst George Ferguson.

Through Tuesday, the stock had dropped 18 percent since the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March.