Boeing MAX 10 Farnborough 2022
Reuters put out some very interesting news about the MAX 7 and MAX 10. Let’s go deeper than this good news.
MAX 7 and MAX 10: The FAA-EASA Relationship Is the Real Story
Boeing’s two pending narrowbody certifications are finally converging on a single, coherent timeline — and the more significant development isn’t the certification progress itself. It’s who’s saying it, and how they’re saying it together.
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FAA Deputy Administrator Chris Rocheleau said the agency is in the final stages of certifying both the MAX 7 and MAX 10, speaking at a safety conference in Chantilly, Virginia, on June 17. EASA Executive Director Florian Guillermet went further, calling MAX 10 validation a top agency priority: “We are making very good progress on the final closure of the last actions. I think it’s good that we are able to close that in the upcoming period, because we will be able to turn the page and to move on.” He added: “We don’t have many hurdles or major milestones.”
That is about as close to a green light as a regulator gets before the actual signature.
The Timeline, Confirmed Again
This matches what Boeing, Southwest, and Ryanair have been saying for months. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford confirmed in April that regulators found no issues that would delay either certification beyond year-end. The MAX 10 entered Type Inspection Authorization Phase 2 — the final stage of certification flight testing — during Q1 2026. Southwest, which holds roughly 90% of all MAX 7 orders, with 289 aircraft on order, expects FAA approval by August 2026, with CEO Bob Jordan targeting 1Q27 for operations. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary has said Boeing expects MAX 10 certification in 3Q26, with first Ryanair deliveries in spring 2027. Our April certification calendar piece flagged 2Q and 3Q26 as the windows to watch. Nothing here moves those windows — it confirms them from the regulator’s own mouth, on both sides of the Atlantic, on the same day.
Why the EASA-FAA Dynamic Matters More Than the Date
Relations between EASA and the FAA soured after the fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019, prompting EASA to conduct its own independent scrutiny of Boeing’s designs rather than simply deferring to FAA sign-off. Both Rocheleau and Guillermet emphasized markedly improved relations between the two agencies, and Rocheleau said the FAA and EASA are now working on a data-sharing agreement to improve coordination on certification and risk management.
That data-sharing agreement is the detail worth watching closely. The post-2019 era was defined by EASA’s insistence on running its own parallel verification rather than trusting FAA validation — a process that added months, sometimes years, to certification timelines across multiple Boeing programs. A formal data-sharing framework, if it holds, is the structural fix to that bottleneck. It would matter for the MAX 7 and MAX 10 today, and for the 777-9’s EASA validation tomorrow.
Our Backlog Math-The $2Bn parking lot
Combined orders for both variants now exceed 1,700 aircraft globally, including 277 MAX 10s for United, 105 for Alaska Airlines, and orders from Delta, American, and Pegasus. Add WestJet as the MAX 10 launch customer and Southwest’s 289-aircraft MAX 7 position, and the certification delay has been suppressing deliveries against a growing backlog while the clock ticks.
There are 25 MAX 7s assembled and should be deliverable in short order. (They may need some updating) We’ve previously pointed out that there’s some concern within Southwest about taking these aircraft.
Our tracking shows 11 MAX 10s have done a first flight.
These planes aren’t just sitting; they are accumulating airworthiness directive debt while parked. When certification drops, Boeing likely cannot hand over the keys. They probably face labor-intensive conformity and rework to bring multi-year-old frames up to the exact delivery configuration. This explains why Southwest isn’t eager; they know the delivery flow will be a trickling bottleneck, not a flood.
The MAX 7s are a median of 1,222 days old, and the MAX 10s have a median of 850 days old. Here’s our cost estimate for this parked fleet.
Using a conservative discounted market price benchmark of $55 million per airframe for these single-aisle aircraft, the capital frozen on the tarmac totals nearly $2 Billion:
- 737 MAX 7 (25 aircraft): $\approx $1.375 Billion
- 737 MAX 10 (11 aircraft): $\approx $605 Million
- Total Dormant Asset Value: $1.98 Billion
At an industry-standard 5% annual corporate cost of capital, holding this $1.98 billion in dead inventory costs Boeing approximately $99 million per year. This breaks down to a monthly cash-flow burn of $8.25 million, driven solely by financing costs.
To keep these 36 aircraft flight-ready and prevent environmental degradation (such as engine rot or moisture accumulation in systems), they require ongoing active storage maintenance. At a standard industry narrowbody storage baseline of $3,500 per month per aircraft (covering tarmac space, regular system spin-ups, and inspection labor), the Monthly Physical Maintenance Cost is $126,000 per month ($\approx $1.51 million annually).
Combined, keeping just the MAX 7 and MAX 10 fleets parked costs Boeing an estimated $8.38 million every month ($\approx $100.5 million per year) in financing drag and physical maintenance, with $1.98 Billion in finished asset value remaining completely frozen until certification lines are cleared.
Certification warrants a lot of relief and some champagne bottle popping in Renton. The release of these aircraft to the market is not just significant, it’s huge.
The EASA Data-Sharing Agreement is a Double-Edged Sword
While a formal framework avoids parallel validation, it also means the FAA has likely conceded that EASA gets a permanent window into its internal oversight data. The post-2019 era isn’t ending with a return to the old status quo; it’s ending with the FAA accepting a co-equal partnership out of necessity.
Historically, international aircraft certification followed a strict playbook: the FAA signed off on American metal, and foreign regulators like EASA stamped their validation via long-standing bilateral agreements. The post-2019 crisis shattered that paradigm.
What Chris Rocheleau (FAA) and Florian Guillermet (EASA) actually announced in Chantilly is not a return to the old status quo. It is the formalization of a co-equal partnership. By moving toward a structural data-sharing agreement to manage risk and validation, the FAA is effectively conceding that the era of unilateral American hegemony in aircraft certification is dead. Moving forward, Boeing programs—starting with the MAX 7 and 10 today, and the 777-9 soon—must be engineered from day one to satisfy a duopoly of regulators working in tandem, rather than an EASA that simply defers to the FAA’s timeline.
Bottom Line
Nothing here changes the dates. What changes is the tone — a senior FAA official and EASA’s Executive Director appearing at the same conference, on the same day, both describing the finish line in similarly confident language, while explicitly flagging closer institutional cooperation as the mechanism behind it.
The MAX 7 and MAX 10 are still on track for 2Q/3Q26 certification, as anticipated in our April calendar piece. The more durable story is that the regulatory relationship damaged by 2018-2019 may finally be repairing itself — and that repair will matter for every Boeing program still waiting on EASA, not just these two.
Also, Boeing will be making some big, much-delayed bank deposits.
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