The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the Boeing 737 Max is moving closer to a certification flight, but its top official is still refusing to put a date on when the aircraft could return to service.
FAA administrator Steve Dickson told reporters over the weekend that the regulator is “following a very diligent process” and is “focused on the process and not on the timeline”.
Dickson said earlier this month that there were still issues that needed to be addressed on the 737 Max following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 in which 346 people were killed. These included a more recently identified problem with the aircraft’s wiring that could cause a short circuit.
He also said that he would not recertify the aircraft until he had flown it himself, which he claimed he would do with his family on board.
Updating the media, Dickson said that while the issues “continue to narrow”, the FAA is still waiting for proposals from Boeing for “a few items”.
The 737 Max has been grounded since March 2019, forcing some airlines to cancel flights that would have been operated by the plane. American Airlines recently announced it was making schedule adjustments through 18 August, saying it believes based on communications with the FAA that this would be the date of the aircraft’s return to service.
Meanwhile, United Airlines has taken the 737 Max out of its schedule until at least 4 September and Southwest Airlines, the aircraft’s biggest customer, has done the same until 10 August.
Boeing has only said that it expects the 737 Max to be recertified in “mid-2020”, though Dickson has repeatedly said the FAA is not working to a timeline for the process and said doing so is “not helpful”.
In his latest update, Dickson also said that while he expected global regulators to be aligned over the requirements for recertifying the plane, there could be differences in how it is put back into service in various countries.