A worker inspects a Boeing 737 aircraft at Boeing’s Renton factory in Renton, Washington, on April 15, 2025. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP) (Photo by JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
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The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has reauthorized Boeing to issue limited airworthiness certificates for its 737 and 787 aircraft. The agency’s decision restores some of Boeing’s designee authority—its ability to self-certify the airworthiness of aircraft on behalf of the FAA—which the regulator had suspended after the Alaska Airlines flight 1282 mid-cabin door plug blowout revealed faults in the aircraft manufacturer’s safety management systems.
“It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks,” then FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said after the incident. “The grounding of the 737-9 and the multiple production-related issues identified in recent years require us to look at every option to reduce risk.”
The FAA increased its direct oversight of Boeing’s manufacturing processes and mandated a reduced production rate of no more than 38 737 aircraft per month. Boeing has been working to regain the regulator’s trust in its quality systems and to increase 737 production to 42 aircraft per month.
The FAA’s announcement on Friday marks a cautious step by the regulator to ease oversight restrictions, which is a much-needed positive step forward for Boeing.
Balancing Oversight And Delegation
Delegated authority is a standard of the FAA’s certification system that authorizes quality representatives from manufacturers who are responsible to the FAA to approve specific compliance steps through Organization Designation Authorization (ODA). Boeing’s loss of that privilege reflected failings in its safety management systems, as confirmed after an FAA expert panel review.
After a six-week audit of Boeing’s facilities, Whitaker told NBC’s Lester Holt: “What we saw was not the safety culture that we were looking for.” He noted the absence of a safety briefing before entering Boeing’s manufacturing facility and said, “It was all about production. And there’s nothing wrong with production, but it has to follow safety.”
Despite this, Whitaker confirmed that there were no “unsafe airplanes leaving the factory.”
By again granting Boeing the ability to issue its own certificates—albeit in a limited capacity—the FAA is signaling some confidence that the company’s corrective actions are taking hold.
Boeing’s Cultural And Quality Reforms
Speaking earlier this month at the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference, Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg acknowledged the deep cultural and operational reset the company has had to undertake.
“One of the first things I did when I joined was focus on getting our leadership closer to the people building and designing the products. I think we got too far away. We got distant. I moved to Seattle. My office is right on the Seattle Delivery Center. I can, every morning – and I do every morning, look out and see what airplanes are where, and are they moving, and if not, why, and trying to get people close to the organization,” Ortberg said.
Ortberg detailed the steps that Boeing has taken to ensure the integrity of its new safety and quality plan.
“The BCA team has done a really nice job of implementing the safety and quality plan. That is a part of our commitment to improve the product and the safety of our systems, and it’s the commitment we have to the FAA. That plan is on track,” he said. “They’re implementing it on schedule. So I feel real good about that. We do, as a part of that plan, have six major key performance indicators that we use to track the stability of the production system, and the FAA is using those to also be a factor in the determination of a rate increase. We’ve got one KPI that we’ve been bouncing between green and a little bit below green, which is rework. I’ve talked about that in the past. We see that progressing well. So I feel pretty confident that we’ll be in a position here pretty soon to sit down with the FAA and go through what we call a Capstone Review, which is the process we go through to not just go through these KPIs, but to look at our entire supply chain readiness, our continued production readiness, and move forward with that.”
While Boeing has made progress, Ortberg conceded that “this is a multiyear” cultural change. “You don’t change your culture overnight, and we’re 170,000 people, so it’s a big ship to get turned. But I feel like we are turning.”
During the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference, Ortberg also said that certification processes were strained. “It’s way too slow,” he said of the FAA’s pace of approvals. “We’ve got to work with the FAA in swinging the pendulum back and making that a process that will work.”
The FAA’s decision announced on Friday to restore partial self-certification authority will help address those delays.
Boeing Takes A Step Forward
After facing many setbacks since the Alaska Airlines incident, regaining even limited designee authority from the FAA is critical for Boeing to restore credibility with other global regulators, airlines, and passengers. It could also help ease delivery bottlenecks as the company works to raise production of the 737 MAX to 42 jets per month by the end of this year and the 787 Dreamliner to 10 aircraft per month by next year.
Still, the FAA’s reauthorization is not a return to business as usual for Boeing. As Ortberg acknowledged, the previous business-as-usual did not work.
“This is a different Boeing showing up,” he said. “A little bit of the arrogance, knocking it down, a little bit of humility. Get up, let our technical people do the talking and not forcing things. And I think we’re being effective. Our organization is rallying around these new values. And so we just got to keep that going.”
The FAA will continue to monitor the manufacturer closely, and Boeing must demonstrate sustained cultural and operational changes before complete confidence in its systems is restored.
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