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Two years since its global grounding, airlines are now steadily returning their Boeing 737 Max aircraft to commercial operations following the FAA’s regulatory green light late last year. But during a tumultuous period for the industry as a whole, the impact for the manufacturer, its customers and regulators has stretched far beyond simply returning the type to service.
Two years since its grounding and nearly four months since the FAA cleared the type for a return to the skies, thirteen carriers are now flying the Boeing 737 Max on revenue services, including Alaska Airlines, which debuted operations with the type at the start of March.
A timeline of the twists and turns since the type’s grounding two year ago as Boeing, regulators and operators worked to return the Max to service
The Max holds outsize importance for Boeing, both financially and competitively. Which is precisely why the grounding left the US aerospace behemoth in such a competitive pickle, and why the type’s rebound is key to Boeing’s recovery, aerospace analysts say.
The Boeing 737 Max crisis has already upended some aspects of aircraft certification, with regulators more closely reviewing certification projects and shying away from rubber stamping decisions made by foreign counterparts.
Circumstances preceding Boeing’s 2011 launch of the 737 Max programme share similarities with the situation the company now finds itself in.
Since the start of 2020, cancellations and accounting adjustments pushed Boeing’s 737 Max backlog down by some 1,250 aircraft, erasing 28% of the 737 orders Boeing held in January 2020.
When the Boeing 737 Max was barred from the airspace of several countries by national authorities, a question arose as to whether this amounted to breaching a fundamental principle of ICAO – that of mutual recognition of airworthiness certification.
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