Boeing 737 max may fly again ‘by end of year’

Despite crashes that have killed 346 people, Boeing’s grounded 737 Max jet could be back in the air within months.

(Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are parked on the tarmac after being grounded, at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California. Picture: AFP

Boeing’s grounded 737 Max jet could be back in the air by the end of the year, according to Europe’s aviation safety regulator.

The aircraft has been grounded since March last year after the second of two fatal crashes that killed 346 people.

Patrick Ky, executive director of the EU’s Aviation Safety Agency, said: “For the first time in a year and a half I can say there’s an end in sight to work on the Max.”

Mr Ky said the agency expected to lift a technical ban on the Max not long after the US Federal Aviation Administration, adding: “We are looking at November.” China was expected to take longer to give its approval, he said.

The comments helped lift Boeing shares by more than 3 per cent in London yesterday (Friday), with hopes that it would allow the company to start making deliveries to airlines once more.

The lifting of the agency’s ban would pave the way for clearance from national authorities for airlines to resume flying the jet in Europe, which could take longer.

The 737 Max was the bestselling aircraft produced by the US jet manufacturer. In 2018 a 737 Max operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 189 on board. In March last year another of the jets, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, crashed in similar circumstances with the loss of all 157 lives.

The crashes led to the aircraft being grounded and engulfed Boeing in a scandal that it has estimated will cost it at least dollars 19 billion and led to it firing its chief executive last year. Since then the company’s woes have been further compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, which has prompted a collapse in air travel and also delayed efforts to get the 737 Max back into service.

Boeing’s market capitalisation has fallen from almost dollars 250 billion prior to the Lion Air crash to about dollars 85 billion.

A US congressional report last week blamed a “culture of concealment” at Boeing and a desire to put profits before safety for the crashes. It found that they were “the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management and grossly insufficient oversight” by the FAA.

The European safety agency has clashed with its US counterpart and Boeing over the scope of a review into the crashes but Mr Ky said all but one of the differences had now been resolved.

A spokeswoman for Boeing said: “We continue to follow the lead of global regulators on the process they have laid out for the safe return of the 737 Max to commercial service.”

Boeing shares were 3.3 per cent, or dollars 4.90, higher at dollars 150.96 at lunchtime in New York.

The Times