The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States announced on Friday that Boeing can self-issue airworthiness certificates for certain “737 MAX” and “787 Dreamliner” aircraft before delivering them to customers. This is the latest sign that the aircraft manufacturer is regaining trust from regulatory authorities after years of safety crises.
In a statement, the FAA stated, “Safety is the driving force behind all of our actions, and the FAA will only allow this measure to move forward because it is confident that airworthiness certificates can be issued safely. This decision was made after a comprehensive review of Boeing’s current production quality, allowing our inspectors to focus more on supervising the production process.”
The FAA had stopped allowing Boeing to self-issue airworthiness certificates for 737 MAX aircraft in 2019 due to two fatal accidents involving the aircraft model. In 2022, a similar decision was also made regarding the Boeing 787 model due to manufacturing defects.
The FAA often delegates routine inspection tasks to aircraft manufacturers to concentrate limited resources on more critical missions. However, following the second Boeing 737 MAX crash in March 2019, the regulatory agency intensified its oversight of Boeing, exclusively issuing airworthiness certificates for the MAX series aircraft to demonstrate their capability for safe flight. The FAA stated that they will issue airworthiness certificates to Boeing every other week.
These restrictions imposed by the FAA have caused inconvenience for Boeing, as the company cannot be flexible in delivering aircraft to customers since the approval process for airworthiness certificates must adhere to the government employees’ schedules.
Over the years, the company has been striving to overcome a series of safety and manufacturing issues. In January 2024, an Alaska Airlines flight operating a 737 MAX 9 model experienced an incident shortly after takeoff, with an emergency door in the rear cabin coming off in midair. The FAA immediately ordered the grounding of dozens of aircraft of this model and required inspections to be carried out.
Subsequently, the FAA also restricted the production of MAX series aircraft and increased scrutiny on Boeing, the largest exporter in the United States.
Following the news of the FAA relaxing regulations on these two Boeing aircraft models, the company’s stock price rose by more than 4% on Friday.