Insight: The Future of the MAX7 and MAX10

The future of the MAX7 and MAX10 programs at Boeing is now moving firmly into the hands of politicians. In the wake of the two MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019, several recommendations were made by the National Transportation Safety Board and international regulators regarding flight crew alerting systems. Many of those recommendations were codified into law by Congress in late 2020, providing a two-year window after which all new aircraft would be required to include a more sophisticated flight crew alerting system.

The FAA, which certifies new aircraft in the US and follows the laws set by Congress, is tasked with developing new requirements for crew alerting systems in the cockpit and defining the processes for determining how human factors impact flight operations and requirements in the cockpit. With the time frame for the law ending next month and the certification of both aircraft delayed until next year, it is clear that something will have to give.

The mid-term elections could determine whether Congress will modify the law passed in 2020 to exempt the MAX 10 and MAX 7 from the new requirements and allow the aircraft to be certified as designed or require Boeing to go back to the drawing board and design a new crew alerting system for those two models. If the law is not changed, Boeing would likely walk away from both variants, as they represent a small portion of the overall demand for the MAX family. The backlog for the MAX through mid-October 2022 by the model is as follows, with any orders for undisclosed models categorized as MAX 8 orders.