The Biggest 737 Has Stopped Flying Tests and Started Filing Paperwork

Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg told investors at the Morgan Stanley Laguna conference on 16 September that certification of the 737 MAX 10 is coming ‘very soon’. Flight testing on the largest member of the MAX family is complete, and what is left is what he described as the documentation phase: assembling and submitting the evidence the Federal Aviation Administration needs to issue an amended type certificate. He said that when he left Seattle the previous day there were three deliverables outstanding, and that the FAA’s review workload on this variant is substantially larger than it was for the smaller MAX 7.

The delay has been long enough that the aircraft has become a running story in its own right. The MAX 10 was supposed to be certified years ago; it was caught first by the aftermath of the two MAX crashes and the resulting congressional scrutiny, then by an engine anti-ice design issue that affected the whole family, and then by the general slowdown in regulatory throughput that followed. Ortberg also noted that European regulators flew the aircraft the week before and gave Boeing positive feedback, which matters for the follow-on EASA validation that European operators need.

The commercial stake is large. The MAX 10 represents roughly thirty per cent of Boeing’s 737 backlog, and first customer deliveries are targeted for 2027. United and Delta are among the carriers with substantial orders, and several have spent the wait converting positions to other variants or taking Airbus A321neos instead. Ortberg was separately candid that the 737 production ramp is taking longer to stabilise than expected, which is the more sobering half of the same conversation: a certificate does not build aircraft.

For passengers the MAX 10 is the variant that seats around 230 in a single-class layout, which puts it in direct competition with the A321neo on exactly the routes where airlines are most tempted to fit tight seat pitch. Whether that is good news depends entirely on how a given airline configures it. The more reliable consequence is capacity: a large number of these aircraft entering service from 2027 onward is, all else equal, downward pressure on domestic fares in the United States and on medium-haul fares in Europe.

Sources: Leeham News, AirlineGeeks