FRANKFURT—EASA plans to issue its Airworthiness Directive (AD) detailing the conditions for the ungrounding of the Boeing 737 MAX next week, EASA executive director Patrick Ky said Jan. 19.

The issuing of the directive is the last regulatory step needed for the aircraft to return to service in Europe. 

EASA has now analyzed all the comments received based on the provisional AD issued in November 2020 and made changes where needed, Ky told Germany’s aviation press club LPC. He made clear that nothing substantial is changing compared to the preliminary notice: Europe’s safety regulator is following the U.S. FAA, Brazil’s ANAC and Transport Canada (TC) in mandating changes to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), wire routing and training. 

Like TC, EASA will allow pilots to pull the stick shaker circuit breakers under certain conditions to eliminate nuisance alerts. In addition, EASA will request a third “synthetic” sensor to be introduced on the 737-10 in 2022 and also made available on the earlier models.

“For the re-certification of the MAX we had full transparency [from Boeing and the FAA]” though “we were not always aligned on every issue,” Ky said.

Like other regulators, EASA grounded the MAX following the two accidents of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines aircraft in October 2018 and March 2019 respectively in which 346 passengers and crew were killed, and in which MCAS played a key role.

“There were a certain number of components that we did not see as part of the first certification effort,” Ky said. “We then wanted to review them ourselves.” 

As for future programs, Ky made clear that “we will increase our level of involvement” in reviewing safety-critical components and systems. EASA’s expanded role will “not necessarily have an impact on timing” of the certification effort of the Boeing 777X, the next aircraft in line to be approved by the European regulator, Ky believes.

The MAX case “did not destroy the trust in the FAA,” Ky said. “We respect the FAA. But we need to work on how we can complement each other. That did not work so well on the MAX.”

That the aircraft is now flying under somewhat different rules in the U.S. and Europe is something “we have tried to avoid” wherever possible. In its AD, EASA will still allow a changed operational procedure with regards to the stick shaker circuit breakers. “If pilots have acknowledged a failure, understood it and there is no safety issue [of the aircraft actually being in a stall versus faulty sensors triggering nuisance alert], instead of continuing to fly with the stick shaker for an hour or two they can stop [it].”

Ky conceded that, with the 737 being an old design, it would have been “extremely difficult to add a physical third sensor” to organize “voting” between an uneven number of the devices in case values differ. But EASA can live with the compromise of adding a synthetic sensor that calculates what the angle of attack (AOA) should be based on input from different sources. Proposed additional operational procedures for pilots to be able to properly assess AOA-disagree situations have satisfied EASA that the MAX can be flown safely until the new tool is introduced in 2022.

Separately, Ky confirmed that EASA expects to certify the 737-8200, a higher-density version of the 737-8 so far only ordered by Ryanair, “in the coming weeks.” The LCC expects to take delivery of the first aircraft in the second quarter and has recently converted options for 75 more of the -8200s into firm orders.