The head of the Federal Aviation Administration said a software problem would delay certification of the Boeing 737 Max 10 as the agency assesses whether it poses a safety concern, a potential setback for the manufacturer as it seeks government approval of its best-selling family of planes.
Boeing expected to receive the green light from its regulator “very soon” on planes that had been delayed for years, CEO Kelly Ortberg told investors earlier this month. But Boeing said Saturday that it reported a software problem on some 737 Max planes last month that could affect some landing procedures.
“We haven’t yet determined whether this is a flight safety issue or not, but we will delay the 10th…until we are satisfied that we don’t have a problem here,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said at an air traffic modernization news conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
The FAA said in a statement that “safety dictates the certification timeline.” He added that the agency was “following our security review process to investigate this software issue and would not hesitate to take action if necessary.”
Boeing shares extended earlier losses after Bedford’s comments, losing nearly 7% on Monday as investors weighed another delay after years of setbacks for the plane.
“We continue to follow the FAA’s lead as we move through the certification process,” Boeing said in a statement.
Boeing said this weekend that the problem could arise with a vertical navigation system after a plane misses an approach and has to circle and line up to land again, such as in situations where there is an obstacle on the runway, for example. The company and Bedford said pilots were trained for these circumstances.
“The pilots remain at the controls of the airliner and train for these scenarios,” Bedford said Monday. “The issue we are looking at right now is workload.”
The FAA certified the Max 7, the smallest in the family, last month. These planes have the most recent version of the software, which the FAA is currently evaluating. It’s unclear how this might affect deliveries of these planes to customers like Southwest Airlines.
U.S. airlines said they have no Max planes with this problem, in part because they are allowed to revert to older software on those models, if necessary, and not to the newer version that has the potential problem.
Bedford said Boeing had fixed a previous bug in the system but “unexpectedly…introduced a new bug.”
Boeing is trying to overcome years of safety crises, including two Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019. A flight controls system was implicated in those crashes.
Bedford added Monday that unlike that system, it “does not take control away from pilots.”
The company had originally planned to begin delivering the Max 10 in 2020 before these and other safety concerns delayed delivery of the aircraft. This is the last of the Max family awaiting certification.
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