The FAA finally certified Boeing’s 737-10, which has 1,555 orders waiting

Boeing’s biggest 737 spent nine years waiting for this approval. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the Federal Aviation Administration certified the 737-10, the largest member of the 737 MAX family, and Boeing said 1,555 of the jets are on order from more than 30 customers. The airframe was launched at the 2017 Paris Air Show and was first planned to enter service in 2020.

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Airlines now have a certified aircraft, but not yet a delivered one. Boeing said deliveries should begin in the coming months.

The FAA approved an amended type certificate for the jet, according to Boeing’s announcement, which put the program at nearly 1,000 test flights, more than 2,000 flight hours and 1,000 hours of ground testing. CompositesWorld’s report, drawing on Aviation Week, said the announcement came during Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s visit to Boeing’s Everett, Washington, facilities, and that the FAA issued production approval alongside the type certificate.

Nine years from Paris to the amended type certificate

The 737-10 was supposed to be the quick sequel to the 737-9. Instead the 2018 and 2019 MAX accidents, the long grounding and the regulatory scrutiny that followed stretched its development far beyond the original 2020 target, according to the Aviation Week reporting CompositesWorld summarized. Airframer and Fox Business both describe it as the last of the four MAX variants to receive approval, after the 737-7 earlier in 2026.

The program also had to clear a new legal standard. Boeing said the 737-10 is the first commercial airplane certified to the full extent of the 2020 Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act. Airframer’s summary of Boeing’s release reports tens of thousands of pages of documentation behind the approval.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told Aviation Week that the agency will keep holding Boeing to the highest safety standards as production begins. Duffy called the approval a major win for American manufacturing, according to Fox Business.

1,555 orders and a third of the MAX backlog

The order book is the reason the delay mattered commercially. Fox Business reported that the 1,555 orders amount to about a third of the 737 MAX order book, while Airframer put the share at more than 30 percent of unfilled MAX orders. For the family as a whole, Fox Business reported 7,350 orders and nearly 2,500 deliveries through the end of September 2026.

Aviation Week, as summarized by CompositesWorld, placed the 737-10 at 32 percent of the MAX backlog, and said Boeing is ramping a new MAX production line at Everett to push monthly rates beyond 47. The same report noted that the jet lacks the range, capacity and backlog of Airbus’s A321neo, but gives existing MAX operators room to up-gauge. Boeing’s president and chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Stephanie Pope, said the aircraft offers greater capacity, longer range and the best seat economics in its class.

The 1,555 figure is a snapshot taken at the Oct. 20 announcement, and later changes to the order book would appear in Boeing’s monthly orders and deliveries data.

185 to 210 seats, 3,100 nautical miles and the angle-of-attack change

Airlines typically configure the 737-10 with 185 to 210 seats in two classes, and the certified maximum is 230 passengers. Range is up to 3,100 nautical miles, or 5,740 kilometers. Boeing’s own comparison claims the lowest per-seat cost of any single-aisle jet in service and 365 nautical miles more range than competitors without auxiliary fuel tanks, according to Airframer.

An enhanced angle-of-attack system comes with the aircraft. Boeing says it uses monitors to detect faulty sensor readings and can keep erroneous data from other systems, and a display alert identifies the affected sensor to the pilots. Boeing said the system will become standard across the MAX family, with retrofits for aircraft already in service, as the Aviation Week summary reported. Chris Payne, Boeing’s vice president and general manager of 737 Airplane Development Programs, said the flight-test team ran a disciplined, methodical campaign to validate every system, per Airframer.

Certification is not the finish line. Aviation Week reported that European approval from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency is the next step, and that deliveries are slated for late 2026 or early 2027. Airways Magazine added that individual aircraft still need airworthiness certificates at the end of production, an authority the FAA restored to Boeing for new 737 MAX and 787 aircraft under agency oversight in July, and that Boeing has not named the first recipient, a handover date or the first passenger flight.

The same Airways report dates the first flight of the 737-10 to June 18, 2021, and says Boeing had once targeted entry into service in 2023, a later goal than the 2020 plan from the Paris launch. Whichever target is used, the jet reached certification years behind the schedule its customers first signed up for.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.