FAA Certifies Boeing's 737 MAX 10, the Largest Jet in the MAX Family

Six years after it was supposed to start carrying passengers, the biggest member of Boeing's 737 MAX family has finally been cleared to fly them. The Federal Aviation Administration certified the Boeing 737-10, better known as the MAX 10, on Tuesday, opening the way for deliveries to airlines that have ordered 1,555 of the jets.

The approval completes the 737 MAX family and gives Boeing a long-awaited answer to Airbus's best-selling A321neo. It is also the first big test of a tougher certification process that Congress created after two fatal crashes, one that will shape how every new aircraft, including the electric air taxis being built in the Bay Area, gets approved.

What the FAA Approved

The 737-10 seats up to 230 passengers, or 185 to 210 in a typical two-class layout, and flies up to 3,100 nautical miles, about 5,740 kilometers. Boeing says it offers the lowest cost per seat of any single-aisle airplane in service and cuts fuel use and emissions by 20 percent, claims that airlines will test in daily service. Like the rest of the 737 line, it will be assembled at Boeing's factory in Renton, Washington, on the south shore of Lake Washington.

Certification took nearly 1,000 test flights, more than 2,000 flight hours, 1,000 hours of ground testing and tens of thousands of pages of documentation. The jet also introduces an enhanced angle of attack system, which Boeing says will become standard across the 737 MAX family. Angle of attack sensors measure how the wing meets the oncoming air, data that the flight computers and pilots both depend on.

"Our flight test team ran a disciplined, methodical campaign to validate every system," said Chris Payne, who leads 737 airplane development at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, in the company's announcement. "That rigor gives us confidence as we move toward deliveries."

A Long Road to Certification

Boeing originally planned to deliver the MAX 10 in 2020. Instead, two 737 MAX 8 crashes, in 2018 and 2019, killed 346 people and exposed flaws in flight control software and in how the FAA had overseen the airplane. The MAX fleet was grounded worldwide, and the larger and smaller variants fell years behind as regulators took a harder look. Later problems with the engine anti-ice system added more delays.

The 737-10 is the first commercial airplane certified to the full extent of the Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act, the 2020 law Congress passed after the crashes. It requires more detailed documentation of safety assessments and closer evaluation of how pilots interact with aircraft systems. The smaller 737-7 was certified earlier this year.

"The FAA's decision follows a thorough review of the aircraft's design and safety requirements," said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy visited as the approval was announced. Regulators in other countries still have to complete their own reviews before airlines elsewhere can fly the jet.

Who Is Waiting for the Jet

More than 30 customers have ordered the 737-10, and its 1,555 orders make up more than 30 percent of Boeing's unfilled 737 MAX orders. Buyers include United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Alaska Airlines and Ryanair. Canada's WestJet, the launch customer, has said it expects its first delivery early next year, and Boeing says deliveries can begin in the coming months.

Across the whole family, customers have ordered 7,350 737 MAX airplanes, and Boeing had delivered nearly 2,500 by the end of September. "Completing the certification program clears the path for us to deliver a Boeing airplane that will set a new standard in commercial aviation," said Stephanie Pope, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. She added that the company was glad to complete the 737 MAX family, which spans 135 to 230 seats across four models.

Why Silicon Valley Should Care

Bay Area travelers will probably see a lot of the MAX 10. United and Alaska both fly large operations from San Francisco International, and bigger single-aisle jets let airlines carry more people on busy routes such as the shuttle between the Bay Area and Los Angeles or Seattle without adding flights at crowded airports.

The bigger lesson is about software. The 737 MAX crashes were traced in large part to flight control software that relied on a single sensor and that pilots had not been fully told about. The new certification rules focus on exactly that: documenting how software and automation behave, and how humans are expected to respond when they fail. Any engineer who has shipped code that touches the physical world will recognize the problem.

Those rules also shape the Bay Area's own aviation startups. Joby Aviation, headquartered in Santa Cruz, and other electric air taxi makers are working through FAA certification for entirely new kinds of aircraft. A regulator that took years to approve a stretched version of a familiar jet is a reminder that safety approval, not engineering alone, often sets the timeline.

Can the MAX 10 Restore Trust in Boeing?

The prospects are real. Airlines have waited years for this airplane, and many built fleet plans around it. Deliveries could ease the shortage of new single-aisle jets that has kept fares high and forced airlines to fly older airplanes longer. A lower cost per seat could help airlines add capacity on busy routes, and the completed MAX family gives Boeing a full lineup to compete with Airbus for the next decade.

There are real concerns as well. Boeing has to show it can build the jets reliably at higher rates without the quality lapses that have hurt it in recent years, including a door plug that blew out of a 737 MAX 9 in flight in early 2024. Airlines will watch whether the new model meets its range and fuel claims in daily service, and whether early deliveries arrive on schedule. Retrofitting the enhanced angle of attack system across existing MAX airplanes, and training pilots on it, will also take time and money.

The larger debate is about oversight. Supporters of the new process say the extra documentation and human factors reviews are exactly what the crashes showed was missing, and that a slower approval is the price of safety. Critics, including some safety advocates and families of crash victims, argue that Boeing's culture, not just its paperwork, has to change, and that the FAA must stay independent while facing pressure to approve airplanes that airlines badly need.

There is also a competitive question. Airbus has a large head start in the long single-aisle market with the A321neo, and many airlines have split their orders between the two makers. Airbus has also stretched that jet's range with the A321XLR, which can fly some transatlantic routes. How quickly Boeing can deliver the 737-10 will decide how much of that market it wins back.

The signals to watch are specific. When does WestJet receive the first airplane, and when do United and the other U.S. carriers follow? Will foreign regulators approve the jet on a similar schedule? Does the enhanced angle of attack system work smoothly as it rolls out across the fleet? And will Boeing raise production without new quality problems?

From Drones to Jets

At Sparknify we follow how new aircraft earn the right to carry people. Earlier today we looked at Ukraine Says a Drone Flew a Wounded Soldier Off the Front Line, where a cargo drone was pressed into service as a rescue aircraft with no certification at all. The MAX 10 shows the opposite end of the spectrum: years of testing and paperwork before a single passenger boards. Both stories point to the same question for the drone and air taxi startups we cover: how much proof is enough before people climb aboard?

After six years of delays, the hardest part for Boeing may no longer be getting the 737-10 approved, but delivering it on time.

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