FAA gives Boeing no MAX 10 certification date as software fix could take until 2028
The FAA has delayed certification of Boeing's 737 MAX 10 over a newly disclosed software flaw and will not say when it will clear the jet. Boeing's own bulletin points to a permanent fix only in early 2028. Shares fell 6.9% Monday, and the desk expects no MAX 10 certification before the end of 2026.*
Boeing shares fell 6.9% on Monday after the Federal Aviation Administration said it would not certify the 737 MAX 10 until a newly disclosed software problem is resolved, and it gave no date, as CNBC reported. The market is right to treat that as bad news, but may not yet have priced the full delay. Boeing's own guidance to operators points to a permanent fix in early 2028. Deliveries of the jet were originally planned for 2020, and the program has now waited six years with no finish line in sight.
The flaw sits in automated vertical navigation, the software that guides a jet's flight path during a missed approach or go-around. Boeing disclosed on Saturday that in a specific landing scenario, pilots could lose access to that automated guidance. The software comes from GE Aerospace, according to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, and Boeing is developing an update. Pilots keep control of the aircraft throughout; this is not the kind of automated system that overrode pilot input in the two 737 MAX crashes of 2018 and 2019. What Bedford described instead is a workload problem: more for the crew to manage by hand at exactly the point in a flight when workload is already highest.
Asked how long the fix would take, Bedford said, "Is that weeks, days, months? I don't know." He has not concluded whether the issue counts as a safety-of-flight matter, and the FAA is convening a Corrective Action Review Board to work through it. That review board sets the certification date, and review boards do not run on GE's engineering schedule or on Boeing's public relations calendar.
The bug's origin raises a separate concern. Bedford said Boeing had already fixed a related issue and, in doing so, introduced this one. We read that as a process failure: Boeing's software change controls did not catch what its own fix broke, and a company can patch a single component faster than it can fix a process. Boeing flagged the problem to operators in August, and its bulletin said fuller guidance would follow in November, with a permanent fix not arriving until early 2028. Boeing says it is working to move both dates up. Until it does, 2028 is the only date on the record, and it belongs to Boeing, not the FAA.
The delay also affects the MAX 7. The FAA certified the MAX 7 only last month, on the same newest software version now under review, and Boeing has not said what that means for deliveries to customers such as Southwest. CEO Kelly Ortberg told investors earlier in September that MAX 10 certification was coming "very soon." Boeing had flagged the glitch to operators in August, so its chief executive was promising imminent approval while a known software problem sat in front of the regulator. Investors should discount the next "very soon" accordingly. It also means the regulator that cleared an aircraft on this same software version only last month is now the one deciding whether that version is safe enough to keep flying while the fix is built.
Airlines are already sorting themselves into two camps. WestJet, which operates the software in question, told Reuters it has seen no in-service events and does not consider it a safety concern. Alaska and United say none of their current aircraft carry the affected version, and United is going further: it is refusing to accept new deliveries built with that software until the issue is resolved. Airlines are allowed to revert to older software, which is how US fleets are avoiding the problem. The caution is concentrated in the newest jets, which is where the MAX 10 will land.
Airbus is dealing with a separate single-aisle problem this week. Airbus and supplier Leonardo are investigating a manufacturing flaw in fuselage stringers that has triggered a quality alert covering roughly 500 A321neo jets, pushing about 20 deliveries into an already congested fourth quarter. Airbus faces a production delay: the affected jets and the fix are known, though deliveries will slip. Boeing faces a certification hold on an entire variant, which cannot be delivered until the FAA signs off, and no review board date is set. Airbus shares dipped Friday when that stringer alert broke, a one-day move on a delivery slip rather than a blocked certification. The asymmetry favors Airbus in the large single-aisle segment where the MAX 10 was supposed to be Boeing's answer to the A321neo, and every month without certification is a month Airbus keeps that customer conversation to itself.
Bedford has suggested GE could deliver a fix quickly. Code can ship in weeks, but certification runs on a slower clock: a patch still has to pass through the Corrective Action Review Board, and the FAA has to be satisfied the workload question is answered for pilots flying real go-arounds as well as simulated ones. Regulatory sign-off on a jet with this much recent software-related scrutiny takes months even when the fix itself is fast, and Boeing's own bulletin already told operators which timeline to expect.
The desk does not expect MAX 10 certification before the end of 2026. Watch United, the carrier that has already said no to deliveries on the current software, for the first sign the fix actually works. The next hard date on the calendar is Boeing's promised fuller guidance to operators in November, and if that guidance still points past this year, the certification clock resets toward Boeing's 2028 backstop.