The 737 Max does not appear close to flying again. Aviation experts doubt global regulators will act in concert to approve the 737 Max for flight, because serious questions remain about how and
why the FAA approved the 737 Max for flight and whether it
rushed the certification process.
The world's aviation authorities have lost confidence in the US Federal Aviation Administration. In the past when planes were grounded, other regulators followed the FAA's lead. When the FAA approved grounded planes to fly again, regulators around the world similarly let them fly too. That's what happened when the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was grounded because of battery problems in 2013.
But this time, getting the FAA to sign off on the fix won't by itself solve Boeing's problems. That could be troubling news for Boeing (
BA) as it tries to return the planes to service as soon as possible.
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Authorities from nine different countries met for a week's worth of meetings in Seattle recently to discuss problems with the 737 Max. The group, dubbed the Joint Authorities Technical Review, was headed by Chris Hart, the immediate past chairman of National Transportation Safety Board, which is independent from the FAA.
Hart told CNN Business he is "not confident at all" that countries will unanimously and simultaneously approve the 737 Max's return to service. Instead, each country may approve the plane on its own schedule.
Aviation regulators have good reason to be skeptical about following the FAA's lead when lifting the grounding.
Reports about the plane's certification have revealed a process in which Boeing, not the regulator, was calling many of the shots, and
self-certifying the safety of many features.
The FAA followed the company's desire to allow pilots of the original version of the 737 to fly the Max with only a
brief online instruction rather requiring full simulator training. The ability to move pilots from one plane to the other was a selling point for Boeing as it took orders for the planes. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said last month that the company still believes that online training is all that will be needed when the plane starts flying again, but that it will follow whatever regulators require.
Hart said he believes the FAA is "still recognized as the gold standard" for aircraft certification. But questions about its certification process for the Max were at the core of the meeting in Seattle.
"We are not here to determine when to un-ground the plane," he said. "We are here to determine if the certification was robust and if it wasn't robust, what needs to be done to make it robust in the future."