Traffic drives in view of a Boeing Co. production plant, where images of jets decorate the hangar doors, Washington. (AP Photo) The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it will allow Boeing to produce more 737 Max airplanes by increasing the monthly limit of 38 that it imposed after a door plug flew off an Alaska Airlines jet that the company built. The aerospace giant can now produce 42 Max jets per month, the FAA said. It had capped Boeing’s production of Max jets after the terrifying January 2024 incident.
In practice, the production rate fell well below that ceiling last year as the company contended with investigations and a machinists’ strike that idled factories for almost eight weeks.
The FAA said Friday that “safety inspectors conducted extensive reviews of Boeing’s production lines to ensure that this small production rate increase will be done safely.” The agency said this won’t change the way it oversees Boeing production processes and its efforts to strengthen its safety culture, and the FAA’s inspectors at Boeing plants have continued to work during the shutdown.
A Boeing spokesperson said this step followed a “disciplined process” guided by the company’s safety management system that allowed Boeing to demonstrate it can handle building more planes. “We remain committed to implementing our Safety & Quality Plan and working with our suppliers to increase production in a disciplined manner,” Boeing said in a statement.
The company said in July that it reached the monthly cap in the second quarter and would eventually seek the FAA’s permission to increase production. Just last month, the FAA also restored Boeing’s ability to perform the final safety inspections on 737 Max planes it builds and certify them for flight. The planemaker hadn’t been allowed to do that for more than six years after two crashes of the then-new model killed 346 people.
Federal regulators took full control over 737 Max approvals in 2019, after the second of two crashes that were later blamed on a new software system Boeing developed for the aircraft. The FAA ended the company’s right to self-certify Dreamliners in 2022, citing ongoing production quality issues.
