The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) associate administrator for aviation safety, Ali Bahrami, has told Bloomberg that the agency expects to clear the B737 MAX family for flights by the end of 2019.
Short of providing any specific timeline, Bahrami agreed with the indication previously given by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg adding that the FAA will resist any pressure and will clear the type to fly again only once it was fully confident of its safety.
A grounding through the end of 2019 would exceed current forecasts put forward by the type's largest users. American Airlines (AA, Dallas/Fort Worth), which has twenty-four B737-8s in storage, recently extended the moratorium on B737 MAX operations through September 3, 2019, as reflected in its schedules. Other airlines still formally plan for the resumption of MAX operations earlier than that.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said previously that it will insist on its own, independent safety assessment of the updated B737 MAX. This is expected to generate a delay between the ungrounding of the type in the United States and in the European Union.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Boeing delivered 378 B737 MAX aircraft prior to the grounding in mid-March 2019, excluding the testbed units. The majority of them are B737 MAX 8s with forty-five B737-9s also grounded at present.
