Regulators should work together on certifying Boeing 737 MAX: IATA's de Juniac

Regulators should work together in recertifying the grounded Boeing 737 MAX airliner instead of pursuing separate approval processes, the head of the IATA said Tuesday. “For us, it’s a big, big, big mistake. Because we have built the safety of this industry on the single certification decision and the mutual recognition and it has worked very well,” IATA boss Alexandre de Juniac said. Some international regulators have said they plan to conduct they own checks and not simply follow the US FAA should it recertify the plane. The US FAA has traditionally taken the lead in certifying Boeing aircraft, but two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia involving the Boeing 737 MAX have sparked criticism of the FAA’s oversight and its close links with the US planemaker. “If you want to restore the confidence ... we need to come back to this single, mutual recognition which has been so efficient,” de Juniac. Any changes to the certification process should be made jointly and transparently by regulators, he said. Otherwise, he said there was a risk that discrepancies could emerge if regulators followed different procedures, making the process more complex, increasing costs, and potentially less safe because of the lack of unanimity.<br/>