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Both houses of the U.S. Congress approved a $1.7 trillion year-end package of legislation that includes an exemption for Boeing’s 737 Max 7 and 10 to continue the Federal Aviation Administration’s ongoing certification process without a major overhaul of each aircraft’s crew alerting systems. The bill will go to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.
The controversy, born from politics and good intentions by those seeking to make significant reforms to the aircraft certification process, played out over the past year with political theatrics intended to force the action taken by Congress.
Related: Inside the convoluted politics of certifying the last 737 Max models
Boeing’s CEO David Calhoun in July threatened to cancel the 737 Max 10 if an exemption or extension wasn’t granted. A take my marbles and go home approach to stakeholder discussions has long been part of Boeing’s and broader U.S. corporate legislative strategies.
Those directly familiar with Boeing’s internal development said that the company was extremely unlikely to cancel the Max 10 (and the Max 7 by extension) principally because it needed the Max 10’s revised design to validate and certify the new safety systems that it planned to eventually roll out on new production Max 8s, 9s, 8200s and 7s and later for retrofit.
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