As Boeing continues paperwork exercises for the FAA on its final two versions of the four-member 737 Max family, the programs still face significant barriers to certification as regulators sharpen their focus on several areas of documentation in keeping with the Aircraft Certification Safety Accountability Act of 2020. Speaking with a group of reporters recently during a pre-Paris Airshow gathering near Boeing’s 787 factories in Charleston, South Carolina, Boeing Commercial Airplanes senior v-p of development programs and customer support Mike Fleming said the 737 Max 7 “really probably explains the certification environment” since the twin crashes and subsequent grounding of the Max family derailed progress toward entry into service to an extent no one could have predicted when the company launched the family 12 years ago.
“First, we have the Aircraft Certification Safety Accountability Act, which Congress passed a couple of years ago, which led to new requirements on the Federal Aviation Administration,” he explained. “And then coming from them to us [there are] differences in the means of compliance that we have to show to the regulators to move these things forward.”
While Fleming noted that Boeing’s documentation work on the Max 7 has neared completion and that the company anticipated certification “this calendar year,” he wouldn’t reveal Boeing’s internal timeframe target for the largest member of the family, the Max 10. Although the Max 10 incorporates an enhanced angle-of-attack feature among changes associated with its larger size, Fleming insisted that engineers have instituted very few changes in either of the airplanes since the more stringent regulatory environment took hold.
“It’s really all about documentation more than anything else,” he said. "The amount of documentation that we're producing on these airplanes relative to what we've had to produce in the past is considerably larger than it has been.”
“We think we’re getting close with the Dash 7,” he noted. “We’re down to a handful of documents the FAA has not seen yet but our team is working its way through.”
Meanwhile, Boeing has flown the Max 10 for about 850 hours during some 400 flights and, according to Fleming, has done “pretty much everything we can do” until the FAA issues approval to start certification flights. He added that Boeing expects to start flying the airplane for certification credit within the year. “The airplane has been performing great,” he reported. “We couldn't be happier with the airplane itself.”
When asked whether certification of the Max 10 could get pushed beyond 2024, Fleming wouldn’t discount the possibility. "There's a chance that the certification could be pushed past anything,” he said. “As I mentioned earlier, I'm surprised how long it's taken us to get [certification for] the 737-7. I did not see it moving into this year at all. And when pressed on Boeing’s previous estimate of a 2024 approval, Fleming did concede that remains the assumption. “That is the plan that I'm working to right now,” he concluded.