In a new letter the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sent to Boeing on 12 October, the government agency said that some documents submitted by the manufacturer as part of the ongoing 737 MAX 7 certification process are incomplete, while others need a reassessment, David Shepardson reported for Reuters.
The text adds uncertainty to the delivery schedule for the smaller variant of the MAX family. The agency in charge of regulating civil aviation in the country asked to reconsider claims about the role of human factors in potentially dangerous safety situations.
In that regard, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was unable to complete its review of Boeing’s submissions “due to missing and incomplete information regarding human factors assumptions in catastrophic hazard conditions”. The human factors analyses relate to response time and how pilots respond to emergencies.
The letter states that as part of the review, Boeing must assure the Federal Aviation Administration that these safety assessments “do not contain human factors assumptions”. It also clarifies that, if there are others, it must identify them and submit them for review.
For its part, Boeing said it is “focused on meeting all regulatory requirements to certify the 737 MAX 7 and safety remains the driving factor in this effort”.
It was not the first time the regulator has told the manufacturer that the stringent documentation submitted to certify the 737 MAX 7 was inadequate and that the process was therefore unlikely to be completed before 31 December this year.
This deadline is of concern to Boeing, as the Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act (ACSAA), which will tighten the conditions required to obtain a type certificate for a new aircraft, will come into force on 1 January.
The new regulations, approved in 2020, came in response to the controversy surrounding the nature of the process that previously allowed the approval of the 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9, the only ones currently operating commercially, in an expeditious manner (and with the well-known results).
Last March, another document stated that the approval process for the 737 MAX 10 was unlikely to be completed by 2022. Boeing would have to get approval for the 737 MAX 7 first, as authorisation of the larger variant of the family depends on some of the first one’s documentation, according to Dave Calhoun, the company’s CEO.
If they do not get their certification before the end of this year, the manufacturer will have to redesign them to meet the new requirements or get an exceptional extension from the Congress of the United States.
