Boeing’s 737 Max is coming back. Is the world ready for it?
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to finally approve the Max to resume commercial flights on Wednesday, about 20 months after a pair of fatal crashes forced regulators around the globe to ground the once top-selling jet. European regulators are expected to follow suit in coming weeks. This is a major milestone for Boeing and a turning point for a company that somehow repeatedly managed to make an already devastating crisis worse for itself — remember the overly ambitious timelines for the Max’s return? Financially, securing the FAA’s blessing will allow the company to finally make money off the roughly 450 Max jets it has built but not yet delivered because of the grounding order. These days, though, getting regulators’ approval is only half the battle for Boeing.
The company is also contending with a global pandemic that’s made airlines more prone to cut back their orders than to take new planes. Nearly a quarter of the 450 Max jets in storage are “white tails” — planes whose original buyers have backed out, so their tails are unmarked by airline logos — Bloomberg News reported.
