After years of relying on the FAA to certify its jets as airworthy, Boeing is finally going to be allowed to do so itself – sometimes.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday that it was granting Boeing "limited delegation" to issue its own airworthiness certificates for the 737 Max and 787 aircraft, which it hasn't been able to do since 2019 and 2022, respectively.
Boeing lost its ability to certify the airworthiness of the 737 Max after a pair of crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. The agency took 787 certification out of Boeing's hands due to what the FAA said was "production quality issues."
As we've previously reported, the 787's problems include things like a need to be power cycled every 51 days due to faulty software, easy hackability of plane systems, melting batteries, and other issues pointed out before the FAA took control of its airworthiness. Not that things have become much better for the 787 since the FAA assumed responsibility for its airworthiness, mind you: Since then Boeing has delayed 787 deliveries due to faulty horizontal stabilizers, and a whistleblower has argued that chronic fuselage gaps have left the entire 787 fleet in a position to fly apart at the seams.
The 737 Max has continued to have problems since the FAA took over inspection of that Boeing model, too. It was a 737 Max 9 which lost a door plug in flight last year. The FAA grounded 737 Max aircraft following the door plug incident, after which United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, the only carriers with Max 9s in their fleets, discovered a chronic problem of loose bolts on the questionably-airworthy aircraft. A Congressional look at internal Boeing documents found emails from engineers saying in 2020 that they wouldn't put their own families on the 737 Max over safety concerns.
The FAA gave Boeing 90 days to fix a number of safety shortcomings it flagged in a February 2024 report it published following the door plug blowout. It's well past that 90-day deadline, but the FAA now says that they're at least partially content with improvements the company has made since it started scrutinizing the firm, again, last year.
Airworthiness certification custody sharing
"The FAA will only allow this step forward because we are confident it can be done safely," the agency said in its Friday press release – but being done safely still means Boeing will be subject to FAA scrutiny.
Per the Administration, Boeing will only get to issue airworthiness certificates every other week, with the FAA handling things the other half of the time. Far from being simply an acknowledgement that Boeing is doing better, the FAA is going to use its every-other-week model to spend more time keeping a watchful eye on the assembly process.
"By alternating weeks, we are creating more opportunities to directly observe how Boeing is carrying out this responsibility in practice," an FAA spokesperson told The Register.
"The FAA's role is to provide oversight of Boeing's performance, ensuring that it issues certificates only when airplanes meet all applicable safety requirements," the spokesperson continued. "Alternating weeks strengthens our ability to identify trends, intervene early if concerns arise, and maintain confidence in the overall safety of Boeing's system."
The FAA didn't tell us whether the agreement was temporary, or how long it might take Boeing to earn its complete trust and confidence in its ability to issue reliable airworthiness certificates. Boeing didn't respond to questions for this story. ®