Washington: The Boeing Company is making “significant” progress towards getting its 737 MAX aircraft in the air again, but the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will need at least several more weeks for review, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said on Tuesday.
Boeing and the FAA are grappling to contain a crisis in the wake of two 737 MAX crashes that have left 346 people dead, forced airlines to ground more than 300 aircraft, and put on hold Boeing deliveries worth more than $500bn.
Boeing has said it hopes to resume 737 MAX flights later this year, although major US and Canadian airlines have cancelled MAX flights until January or February.
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Dickson said at a conference of air traffic controllers in Washington that the agency had received the “final software load” and “complete system description” of revisions to the plane, which was grounded in March.
The FAA is currently using “aircraft production software” in the engineering simulator. The next step is to complete pilot workload management testing and have US and international pilots conduct scenarios to determine training requirements before a key certification test flight.
“It is going to be several more weeks before we go through all of that part of the process,” Dickson said. “We’ve got considerable work to do,” he added.
