US industry will suffer unless Congress grants Max 10 cockpit exemption: United CEO

United Airlines’ CE is warning that Boeing and broader US industry will suffer if the US Congress fails to exempt Boeing’s 737 Max 10 from a new cockpit-alert-system requirement. That requirement takes effect on 27 December, and the clock is ticking as Boeing works to avoid further delays to its Max 7 and Max 10 certification timelines. “Boeing is our largest exporter – high tech manufacturing – the very thing that everyone in Congress wants us to create,” Kirby says during an event in North Charleston, South Carolina on 13 December. Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal says Boeing is continuing its Max 7 and 10 certification work under the existing requirements, on the expectation the exemption will come through. “We are going to keep our head down, working on certification… under the current law,” Deal says. “This story is compelling because we’re just trying to keep the aircraft safe.” Under a 2020 law, the FAA will be prohibited, as of 27 December, from certificating aircraft lacking a modern “flight-crew alerting system”. No Max variants have such technology. The Max 7 and 10 are now in the certification process and would be subject to the new regulation, barring an exemption. “The choice is, do you have American workers build these airplanes in Seattle, or are they built in Europe, China,” adds United’s Kirby. He says changing the Max 7 and Max 10’s cockpits will reduce safety. “Putting a different cockpit in requires the same pilots to be trained in two different cockpits and in two different systems… It’s a degradation of safety as opposed to an improvement,” Kirby says. United has orders for 442 737 Max, including at least 236 Max 10s, according to Cirium data. It also operates Max 8s and 9s, which are already certificated. Story has more. <br/>