Boeing Max ‘high on China’s minds,’ but no clear return date

China doesn’t have a clear timetable for when Boeing’s 737 Max can return to service, though it has been holding talks with the company as well as US and European aviation regulators, the head of the country’s civil aviation authority said. Feng Zhenglin, director of the CAAC, told reporters at a briefing in Beijing that the issue of the grounded Max was “high on our minds” and that there’d been some technical collaboration on the matter with US and European counterparts. Three criteria need to be approved before China allows the Max to fly again, Feng said Thursday. Any change of design needs to approved, pilot training must be comprehensive, and the conclusions of investigations into the two accidents involving the plane need to be clear and improvement measures effective. China was the first major jurisdiction to ground the Max following the second of two crashes that killed a total of 346 people in Ethiopia and Indonesia. China’s move in March last year sparked a cascade of groundings in other countries even as the US FAA said at the time the plane was safe to fly. There were nearly 100 Max planes in operation in China prior to the grounding, making it the biggest market for the jet. The Big Three -- Air China, China Eastern and China Southern -- are all Max customers, along with about 10 other carriers in the country. Europe’s top aviation regulator said last week the plane is safe enough to fly again before the end of this year. Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, said China had participated in some of the Max reviews but hadn’t been involved in flight testing. “I honestly don’t know where they are” with their evaluation, Ky said.<br/>