In the US, Boeing has won an all-important backing from Congress to lift a looming deadline imposing a new safety standard for modern cockpit alerts for two new versions of Boeing’s best-selling 737 MAX aircraft.

The company had been heavily lobbying for months to persuade lawmakers to waive the December 27 deadline that affects its MAX 7 and MAX 10 airplanes, which was imposed by Congress in 2020 after two fatal 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Congressional leaders attached the waiver to a bill to fund US government operations and to require new safety enhancements for existing MAX aircraft proposed by US Senator Maria Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, according to the text made public early on Tuesday. Congress is expected to approve the legislation this week.

Boeing has logged more than 1,000 orders for the two new versions of its best-selling MAX.

Aviation stakeholders in the US had warned Congress in recent days that a failure to lift the deadline could threaten the new planes and cost jobs, while families of those killed in the two crashes and “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot Captain Sully Sullenberger were among those opposed to it as did House Transportation Committee Chair Peter DeFazio.

The resolution would require Boeing to retrofit existing MAX planes with a synthetic enhanced angle-of-attack (AOA) system and the ability to shut off stall warning and overspeed alerts. It gives airline operators three years from the time the 737 MAX 10 is certified to retrofit existing MAX planes and says Boeing must bear those costs.

“The safety-first alternative is much stronger than the no-strings-attached approach that was first offered. Passengers need to know that the entire MAX fleet will be uniform and safer,” Cantwell said in a statement.

Investigations found that faulty data from a single sensor erroneously activated a software function called MCAS and played critical roles in both fatal 737 MAX crashes. To recap, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2020 required Boeing to retrofit planes to ensure MCAS would activate only if it received data from two AOA sensors. The new synthetic sensor will provide additional data to help prevent an erroneous MCAS activation, officials said.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Stan Deal said last week the planemaker supported Cantwell’s safety retrofit proposal.

Without action by Congress, after December 27 all planes must have modern cockpit alerting systems in order to be certified by the FAA, which could jeopardise the futures of the MAX 7 and 10 or mean significant delays for the new aircraft’s deployment.

The bill will also allow the new MAX variants to have the same alerting systems as the MAX 8 and MAX 9 currently in service. The alerting requirement in the 2020 law that reformed aircraft certification does not apply to in-service MAX airplanes previously certified by the FAA.

Boeing said in October it expects the 737 MAX 7 to be certified this year or in 2023, and last week Boeing’s Deal said he thinks the MAX 10 could receive certification in late 2023 or early 2024.

In addition to monitoring and certifying the design changes, the FAA will also have to brief the US Congress on the continuing progress of the certification of the 737 MAX-7 and MAX-10, the bill added.

The first report must be provided no later than March 1, 2023, and after that date, the FAA’s Administrator will have to appear before Congress on a quarterly basis. The FAA Administrator will be required to provide detailed information on how the certification of the 737 MAX-7 and MAX-10 is progressing, “including any design enhancements, pilot procedures, or training requirements resulting from system safety assessments”. They will also have to brief US lawmakers on the implementation of the safety enhancements for the 737 MAX family.

Boeing has reportedly taken orders for about 1,000 of the MAX 7 and MAX 10 jets worth as much as $50bn, and cancellation of those orders could result in financial losses if the purchasing airlines didn’t choose to order the MAX 8 and MAX 9 jets that have been approved by the FAA.

The grounding of the 737 MAX led to a $34bn market value tumble for the Boeing Company. Some of Boeing’s own shareholders sued the US planemaker for alleged securities fraud violations and concealing safety deficiencies in its 737 MAX, with some claiming “Boeing effectively put profitability and growth ahead of aeroplane safety and honesty by rushing the 737 MAX to market.” “It will go down in the history books,” another airline fleet manager told me, pointing out that “the 737 MAX continues to be a household name for all of the wrong reasons.”

Source: Civil Aviation Authority-Qatar