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FAA Won’t Clear 737 Max Fixes Until 2020, Agency Chief Says

Boeing had said on Nov. 11 that it hoped the FAA would approve its redesign of the 737 Max by the end of this year.

FAA Won’t Clear 737 Max Fixes Until 2020, Agency Chief Says
American Airlines Group Inc. Boeing Co. 737 Max planes sit parked outside of a maintenance hangar at Tulsa International Airport (TUL) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. (Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. government approvals needed to return Boeing Co.’s 737 Max to the skies won’t be completed until 2020, the top U.S. aviation regulator said Wednesday, dashing the company’s hopes to complete key milestones this year needed to end the aircraft’s nine-month grounding.

“If you do the math, it’s going to extend into 2020,” Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Stephen Dickson told CNBC on Wednesday, hours before he is expected to testify before a congressional panel. “We’re going to do it diligently because safety is absolutely our priority with this airplane.”

Regulators worldwide grounded Boeing’s top-selling aircraft last March, days after the second of two crashes in a five month span that killed 346 people. Boeing said Nov. 11 that it hoped the FAA would approve its fixes to the 737 Max by the end of 2019, though it acknowledged that completing new training requirements for pilots would likely slide into January.

After the FAA clearance, airlines will still need several weeks or more to get their planes back in the air after being held in storage for months. Southwest Airlines Co. and other major U.S. carriers with grounded 737 Max jets have already pulled the planes from their schedules through at least early March.

Boeing shares fell as much as 2.7% in New York trading and were down 2.1% at $340.66 at 10:21 a.m.

“We continue to work closely with the FAA and global regulators toward certification and the safe return to service of the MAX,” Boeing said in an email response.

Dickson’s comments come hours before he is scheduled to testify before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. It will be the panel’s fifth hearing on the 737 Max and is likely to draw attention to missteps by the agency in its initial certification of the 737 Max.

The committee, which grilled Boeing President Dennis Muilenburg on Oct. 30, is turning its attention to how the FAA certified the plane with a flight control system implicated in the two fatal crashes. The agency had already come under fire for its response to the first crash, when a Lion Air 737 Max plunged into the Java Sea in October 2018. The FAA grounded the jet days after an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed on March 10, after regulators in other countries already had.

After the October Lion Air crash, the FAA allowed jet continue to keep flying despite an agency analysis indicating the jet could have averaged a crash every two to three years without changes to the plane, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing an internal agency analysis.

--With assistance from Alan Levin and Richard Clough.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman

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