4 ms·

There is no FAA requirement to maintain the old certificate. Boeing and it’s customers wanted to do that for cost savings. It is supposedly costly in time and

by babesh 6y ago

There is no FAA requirement to maintain the old certificate. Boeing and it’s customers wanted to do that for cost savings. It is supposedly costly in time and money to acquire a new rating but it has been done obviously. The airlines wanted a single pool of interchangeable pilots flying in name interchangeable planes (their existing 737s and the 737 MAX). Supposedly one of the airlines threatened to take new business to Airbus and had penalties written into the contract to make the 737 MAX fly under the existing certificate. So it wasn’t the old certificate driving these issues, it was Boeing and it’s customers wanting to maintain the old certificate that drove the issues. That is a very large difference.

nickff 6y ago
Perhaps my previous post was vague, but I meant 'FAA requirements [of commonality, required to] maintain the current certificate'. The FAA may be in the right or in the wrong, but it has made certifying new designs almost prohibitively expensive and time-consuming; for evidence of this, simply look at the Cessna 172 (still in production on a 60-year old certificate), and what happened when Bombardier tried to put a new airliner into production. You're definitely right that the airlines wanted interchangeable type ratings for crew, but the issue slightly more complicated than you're painting it. I never argued the old certificate forced the issues, the certification system just strongly incentivized 'upgrading' the 737. This was one of many causes.