FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/17/faa-boeing-737-max-787.html

by hmm37 • 5 days ago

196 82 5 days ago

greatgib• 5 days ago

Totally insane. Repeating the same errors as in the past and hoping for a better outcome... Only corruption can explain that...

bob001• 5 days ago

Let's see if the EU shows some backbone or not.

shevy-java2• 5 days ago

The EU is like a tiger - without teeth, fur or claws. I think the only thing that works here is total boycott of airplanes that constantly unalive people through mass crashes. (Wikipedia really gathers useful data here in a simple-to-read manner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...)

bobthebob2• 5 days ago

Can you explain exactly why this is bad?

atoav• 5 days ago

There has been a history of problems with that exact airframe where people died. People dying is usually considered bad.

Now root cause of the issue that airframe had before was that Boeing was given the leeway to certify it themselves with too little oversight by the FAA. In short: the airframe of the Boeing 737 MAX is so far away from the originally certified 737 airframe it is ridiculous to consider them the same airplane. The adjustments Boeing made via softeare to deal with the physical changes (like putting the much bigger engines forward so they have enough clearance under the wings without having to certifying this as a new airframe) was the cause of the incidents. A truly independent FAA would have never even remotely accepted that.

kube-system3• 5 days ago

I have read that self-issuance of airworthiness certificates has been normal since the 1950s. Given that, I don't think the issue is due to regulatory corruption but an issue at Boeing which has (hopefully) been resolved.

estearum• 5 days ago

"The issue" at Boeing is obscene levels of financialization which, of course, has not been "solved."

UltraSane• 5 days ago

The EU should refuse to allow such planes to enter their airspace.

cebert• 5 days ago

This is absolutely frightening.

bobthebob2• 5 days ago

Why?

armada651• 5 days ago

Having airworthiness certification done by an independent organization not beholden to Boeing's shareholders makes much more sense to me. Giving the authority to Boeing to do its own airworthiness certification feels like the fox guarding the hen house.

bushido• 5 days ago

The 737 has had 14 major recertifications. The aircraft today looks/behaves nothing like the original from the 1960s.

The main motivation for recertifications comes from commercial pressure where if a aircraft is given a new number and not recertified, then the pilots have to be retrained.

Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.

Recertifications are very common. The issue really is is the aircraft is AS different and untested as the old MAXs, and I really can't see that happening again in the next decade or two atleast.

pudgywalsh• 5 days ago

Consumers are indeed very concerned... that they be able to purchase £49 tickets on RyanAir.

ghaff3• 5 days ago

And then they complain about seat sizes and baggage dimensions.

kube-system3• 5 days ago

The #1 rule of marketing is that people's actions rarely line up with what they say they're going to do.

jrockway• 5 days ago

Sort by price ascending and pick the first result.

stasomatic• 4 days ago

Unfortunately. Enthusiast "want" a manual transmission car but almost none buy. Can't blame the makers.

carabiner• 5 days ago

Toyota had the largest recall in history for the unintended acceleration debacle. Yes, lots of people were saying they'd never set foot in a toyota again. Now people don't even remember it.

nothercastle• 4 days ago

Wasn’t even an actual problem it seems just caved to pressure from lawyers

scottlamb• 5 days ago

Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.

Is this kind of consumer revolt even really possible?

If you feel strongly enough that you refuse to fly altogether, then of course you can avoid flying on a 737 MAX. But I think most people did not feel the risk was that high. They just want to select "guarantee no 737 MAX" when booking a flight, and as far as I can tell that option doesn't exist.

Even if the flight is not a 737 MAX when you book, they can and sometimes do change aircraft, and as far as I know there's no option to get your money back when they do. If you show up and see it's a 737 MAX...you either get on or you lose your money, and have to find some other way to get where you're going, right?

Alupis• 5 days ago

In 2013 there were approximately 24,000 737 flights per day[1] - likely more today. If narrowed to just the MAX variants, it's still thousands per day.

Two, albeit high profile, crashes out of all the daily MAX volume is simply not something to worry about - let alone influence your booking choices.

[1] https://chinaerospace.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/18.1%20%E6...

bombcar2• 5 days ago

If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.

Sure, there's a tiny chance they put a chartered jet in for your flight, but that's exceedingly rare.

jayofdoom• 5 days ago

Honestly they kinda screwed over people -- like me -- who tried to avoid the MAX planes for a while. I'd specifically book around the MAX planes and then they would change equipment at the last minute into a MAX. There is no meaningful "knob" an aviation consumer can turn to express an aircraft preference, and given how US airspace works, you often don't have a meaningful choice in carrier (unless you're willing to take on extra stops).

archagon2• 5 days ago

Sure there is. Just fly carriers that use an Airbus fleet. It’s honestly pretty trivial.

MatmaRex• 5 days ago

In Europe "no 737 MAX" basically means "no Ryanair". Depending on how you feel about Ryanair, avoiding the 737 MAX can be very easy.

In other places, like the US, they may not be practical to avoid.

cryo32• 5 days ago

This is what I do. No Ryanair. Everyone else runs A320 series across Europe. I usually just fly easyJet.

odiroot• 5 days ago

There's more and better reasons than MAX to avoid Ryanair.

Sadly Polish national airlines (among others) also went hard on 737MAX8 so it's not only the budget ones.

dataflow• 5 days ago

In Europe "no 737 MAX" basically means "no Ryanair". Depending on how you feel about Ryanair, avoiding the 737 MAX can be very easy.

Eh?

- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AEA1517

- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/LOT279

- https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/ICE613

ulfw• 5 days ago

Honestly no Ryan Air is the right decision for oh so many reasons, but yes the horrible 737-Max is top on the list

bmitc• 5 days ago

I have avoided flying on a 737 MAX and have even asked about it at gates when a plane was switched.

Part of the problem though is that many, many, many routes were straight up removed during and after COVID and still haven't returned. There is often no choice, particularly with certain companies like Southwest. However, I haven't flown Southwest since I learned that they were basically complicit, if not directly involved, in Boeing's 737 MAX issues.

shevy-java2• 5 days ago

Until the next mass crash ...

markasoftware• 5 days ago

[Deleted]

kube-system3• 5 days ago

This is not exactly the same thing, this isn't Boeing being allowed to sign off on their design -- this is only the airworthiness certificate which means "this particular airplane we just built follows the spec which was already otherwise approved".

brikym• 5 days ago

All I read is that the US govt signs on off US export. I'd be surprised if there was not pressure on FAA to lower the bar.

munk-a• 5 days ago

Just to comprehend this a bit better - it sounds like the FAA had stripped Boeing of the ability to self-recertify and actually sent inspectors for the most recent certifications. After several successful certifications and what would appear, to the inspectors, to be real process improvements, they're now re-granting Boeing the ability to self-recertify when self-recertification is allowed?

This is well outside my knowledge domain so I'm not trying to make any statements on whether this was correct, but rather to better comprehend the change.

rogerrogerr3• 5 days ago

This is accurate, except “recertify” is the wrong verb. This is about signing off on individual airplanes.

blitzar• 5 days ago

Who gave whom a golden airplane ... totally worth it, for them at least.

greenleafone7• 5 days ago

Yeah, not thanks. A company being kept alive by the US government is not one I'll ever trust with my life.

ronnieron• 5 days ago

I only fly airbus. If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.

ifwinterco• 5 days ago

I don't go that far and I'm not exactly scared to fly on a Boeing (because statistically it's still very safe, I ride motorbikes which is probably 100x more dangerous etc etc).

However I definitely prefer flying on an Airbus, put it that way

burnt-resistor2• 4 days ago

I was just going to say this. Post-MD management disasters like the 737 NG Ducommun scandal that barely anyone knows about and nothing was done to rectify poor quality "approved" structural parts and mishandled assembly line installation doesn't win confidence in the flying inventory.

tzs• 5 days ago

The U.S. government on Friday said Boeing can once again issue airworthiness certificates for its bestselling 737 Max aircraft and 787 Dreamliners, an authority that was stripped from the manufacturer after fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 of the 737 Max.

I'm a bit confused by this. From what I've read an "airworthiness certificate" is not a certificate that the aircraft design is good and safe. That would be a type certificate.

The airworthiness certificate is issued for a particular aircraft and certifies that it conforms to the approved design for that type of aircraft, all outstanding airworthiness directives applicable to the type have been applied, no unsafe alterations or repairs have been made, all required documentation and logs are present, the inspector doesn't see any damage, leaks, or other problems that could make it unsafe, and other things like that.

The two 737 MAX crashes had nothing to do with anything that would have been found during their airworthiness inspections. They were functioning exactly as they were designed to, as covered by their type certificate.

So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?

taneq• 5 days ago

“You can no longer certify aircraft of this design as safe” seems a reasonable response to a design flaw causing multiple crashes. My question would be whether the design flaws have been addressed. If not, then allowing them to keep making and certifying them does turn the whole exercise into a piece of theatre. Unfortunately, it’s a totally believable decision for some bureaucracies.

rcxdude• 5 days ago

The two are unrelated, though. The airworthiness certificate is focused on whether a particular plane is built according to the design. It doesn't say anything about the design. And the planes were still being certified, just by the FAA instead of Boeing.

(Looking at a bit more research, I think this bit was revoked because during the investigation the FAA found that Boeing was skimping on these inspections too, but the details are a little unclear)

wahern• 5 days ago

Doesn't directly answer your question, but the CNBC article appears to be correct. See https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-statement-boeing-airworthin...

The FAA stopped allowing Boeing to issue airworthiness certificates for 737 MAX airplanes in 2019 during their return to service following the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, and for Boeing 787 airplanes in 2022 because of production quality issues.

jordanb• 5 days ago

The issue was actually the door plug scandal. It showed that Boeing's QC was compromised in their factory and they were not able to properly certify that the aircraft were being built as designed.

As an aside this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory.

rogerrogerr3• 5 days ago

SC wasn't really involved in this. The fuselage came from Spirit in Kansas, and final assembly happened in Renton.

jimbob45• 5 days ago

Noob here, would that not also have potentially been found during routine maintenance inspections?

stackghost• 5 days ago

So what was the point of suspending Boeing's authority to do those inspections?

Disclaimer: I used to work in airworthiness certification as well as maintenance and design modification engineering for the C-130, but not for any of the Boeing products.

You're generally correct. In layperson's terms, the Type Certificate is like the blueprint or the spec, and the individual airworthiness certificates are a certification that each aircraft coming off the assembly line is in conformance with the approved type design.

When the MCAS debacle happened, the FAA mandated a change to the type design, and further mandated embodiment of that design change through an Airworthiness Directive. This is the part that addressed the MCAS hazard condition. When they withheld Boeing's authority to issue certificates what that really gave them was, at the airframe serial number level, the ability to ensure that the modifications had been embodied correctly.

You're right that that final certification has little to do with correcting the underlying MCAS design flaw on the 737, but there were also quality issues with the 787, and because Boeing's in-house ODA issues those certificates acting as the FAA itself, and those certifications are essentially the last hurdle before delivery of the aircraft (and thus the last hurdle before revenue coming into Boeing's coffers), the FAA withheld that authority so that Boeing employees could not be unduly pressured by management's perverse incentives. Somebody elsewhere in these comments posted the OIG report that briefly touches on this pressure.

In fewer words, it was about ensuring independence in final airworthiness release, and ensuring Boeing's ODA could not be pressured by management who subscribe to the Jack Welch school of ethics.

------

Edited to add:

There is a valid argument to be made that the FAA didn't handle this situation correctly/adequately. For context, in aerospace when we identify that a hazard condition exists we classify both the severity and the likelihood of occurrence. So for example depending on the organization's risk acceptance matrix, one might have a hazard with high severity but extremely low chance of occurrence, and that might be considered acceptably safe (or not!).

The FAA now says that the back-and-forth they have been doing over the last however many months produced comparable production-quality findings regardless of which organization issued the certificates (Boeing's ODA or the FAA itself).

As best I could tell at the time this issue was a hot topic, when it withheld Boeing's issuance authority the FAA never clearly articulated:

- Which risks it was controlling,

- How much risk reduction it expected,

- What data would demonstrate effectiveness, and

- What objective conditions would permit termination of the withholding

So again, there's an argument that the FAA just sort of decided that they now have that Warm Fuzzy and everything is fine.

xgulfie• 5 days ago

People are Boeing to die

t1234s• 5 days ago

Recently I was on the tarmac watching people load up on a 737 MAX on an island runway where the takeoff direction was TOWARDS a mountain. I said a prayer.

inigyou3• 4 days ago

That isn't what the problem with the 737 MAX was.

warumdarum2• 5 days ago

If the deterenc3 to newplanes is type certifications of pilots, how would a law change look that circumvents this hurdle?

linzhangrun• 5 days ago

They should never have allowed aircraft manufacturers to sign their own airworthiness certificates in the first place. Are there that many new aircraft types every year? What is the FAA for? Why does it not take responsibility for certification itself, instead of trusting the aircraft manufacturer’s “Trust Me Bro”?

greenavocado• 4 days ago

We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing

Havoc• 4 days ago

Has anything changed about their corporate culture?

FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again

Related Stories