Boeing 737 MAX timeline from 2011 to 2026: 77 sourced events on a map, from the launch to the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes, the 20-month grounding, the Alaska door plug, the criminal case and its dismissal, and the MAX 7 and MAX 10 approvals.
Boeing chose to re-engine its 1960s narrowbody rather than design a clean-sheet airliner to answer the Airbus A320neo. Commercial Airplanes chief Jim Albaugh promised better fuel efficiency. The decision kept pilots on a common type rating with older 737s. Larger engines had to fit under a low wing, which moved them forward and up, and that change in handling is what the MCAS software was later written to correct.
The first 737 MAX, a MAX 8, rolled out in Renton, Washington, on the shores of Lake Washington, where every 737 is assembled. Boeing said the jet would burn 20% less fuel than the first Next-Generation 737s. The rollout came a little over four years after launch, a short schedule for a new airliner, made possible because the MAX was certified as a derivative of an existing type.
The first 737 MAX took off from Renton Municipal Airport on its maiden flight. Flight testing for the MAX 8 ran through 2016. The test program used a fleet of MAX 8s to show compliance with FAA rules. Under the FAA delegation system, Boeing engineers acting on the agency’s behalf signed off on much of the work.
In 2016 messages with a colleague, Boeing’s 737 chief technical pilot Mark Forkner described MCAS as “egregious” and “running rampant” in a simulator, and wrote: “So I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly).” In a November 2016 email he wrote of “jedi-mind tricking regulators” into accepting the training he had won from the FAA. The messages stayed inside Boeing until October 2019. Forkner was later charged over related conduct and acquitted in 2022.
The FAA certified the 737 MAX 8 as an amended version of the 737 type certificate. The larger MAX 9 followed eleven months later. Certifying the MAX as a derivative meant pilots who already flew the 737 NG needed only short differences training on a computer, with no simulator time. Keeping training that light was a selling point Boeing offered airlines.
Boeing handed the first 737 MAX 8 to Malindo Air, a Malaysian subsidiary of the Lion Air group, at its Seattle Delivery Center at Boeing Field. The airline flew the jet across the Pacific to its Kuala Lumpur base and put it into commercial service six days later. The MAX entered service about six years after launch.
Malindo Air flew the first revenue service of the 737 MAX, from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. Airlines in North America, Europe, China and India followed over the next 18 months. By the end of September 2018 Boeing held orders for nearly 5,000 MAX jets. Each was flown with the same short training for pilots moving over from the 737 NG, and pilot manuals did not mention MCAS.
The FAA’s Flight Standardization Board report for the 737 MAX, which sets minimum pilot training, was published without any mention of MCAS. Federal prosecutors later alleged that Boeing’s chief technical pilot had learned in November 2016 that MCAS had been expanded to work at low speed and withheld that change from the FAA group that wrote the report. A jury acquitted him in 2022. Pilot manuals for the MAX did not describe the system.
Lion Air Flight 610, a new 737 MAX 8 registered PK-LQP, crashed into the Java Sea off Karawang 13 minutes after leaving Jakarta for Pangkal Pinang. All 189 aboard, 181 passengers and 8 crew, died. A diver died during the recovery. It was the first hull loss of the MAX and the deadliest accident of any 737. A faulty angle-of-attack sensor fed MCAS, which pushed the nose down more than two dozen times as the pilots fought it.
A week after the Lion Air crash Boeing issued a bulletin telling pilots how to respond to erroneous angle-of-attack data, the first public description of MCAS. The FAA followed with an emergency airworthiness directive. Boeing had not disclosed MCAS to pilots or airlines before the crash. It kept the jet flying and chose to prepare a software change, which was still unfinished four months later.
Boeing reported 5,011 orders for the 737 MAX from 79 customers. It was building 52 737s a month in Renton. Five weeks later the order book stopped growing. The next large MAX commitment came only in June 2019, when IAG said it planned to buy 200 jets valued at $24 billion.
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a 737 MAX 8 registered ET-AVJ, crashed six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on a flight to Nairobi. It came down near Tulu Fara village outside Bishoftu. All 157 aboard, 149 passengers and 8 crew, died. It was the second MAX 8 lost in under five months and Ethiopia’s deadliest air accident. The route was known as the UN shuttle for the officials who flew it. Ethiopian grounded its MAX fleet the same day.
China’s Civil Aviation Administration grounded all 96 MAX jets flown by Chinese airlines, the first national regulator to act. Indonesia grounded its fleet the same day. On 12 March the FAA said it would not ground the jet. Over the next 48 hours regulators in Europe and dozens of other countries closed their airspace to it.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency suspended all 737 MAX flights in Europe and closed European airspace to the jet. Many other countries acted the same day. That evening the United States and Canada were the last large markets still letting the MAX fly, and U.S. airlines were still carrying passengers on it. Both regulators acted the next day.
The FAA issued an emergency order of prohibition grounding the 737 MAX, three days after the Ethiopian crash. Canada grounded the jet the same day. About 30 MAX jets in U.S. airspace were allowed to reach their destinations. Boeing said it recommended a temporary suspension of the worldwide fleet. The FAA and Transport Canada were the last major regulators to act.
By 18 March every one of the 387 Boeing 737 MAX jets in service was on the ground, idling 59 airlines and about 8,600 weekly flights. Boeing kept building the jet at a reduced rate. Over the following months undelivered MAX planes filled the Renton factory, Boeing Field, employee parking lots and Grant County airport at Moses Lake in central Washington.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao asked the Department of Transportation’s inspector general to audit how the FAA certified the 737 MAX. A grand jury subpoena dated 11 March had already sought documents on the program. On 25 March she set up a special committee to review FAA aircraft certification. On 20 March the FBI joined the department’s criminal investigation.
Boeing presented changes to MCAS for FAA approval. The system would compare both angle-of-attack sensors, activate only once per event and never command more nose-down trim than pilots could counter with the control column. Boeing also offered more pilot training. A week later it found another software issue and called it relatively minor. The Washington Post reported that it was still classed as critical for safety.
Ethiopia’s preliminary report showed the same pattern as Lion Air: a bad angle-of-attack reading, repeated nose-down commands and a crew that could not hold the nose up. The pilots had followed Boeing’s procedure and cut power to the electric trim. At high speed they could not move the manual trim wheel against the airloads, and they switched the electric trim back on before the final dive.
Boeing cut 737 MAX output by 20%, from 52 to 42 jets a month, and kept building planes it could not deliver. In May it delivered 30 airliners against 68 a year earlier. 737 deliveries fell from 47 to 8. The company still held 4,550 unfilled MAX orders, and every jet it built went into storage until the grounding ended.
Boeing said it had learned in 2017 that an angle-of-attack disagree alert worked only on jets whose airlines bought an optional indicator, and that it told neither airlines nor the FAA until after the Lion Air crash. Boeing had planned to fix the alert in a later software update three years out. In June Dennis Muilenburg called the handling of the alert a mistake and the communication unacceptable.
Chief executive Dennis Muilenburg told CBS News that Boeing clearly fell short on the warning light and its communication with regulators. The two crashes had killed 346 people. Boeing was still building 42 MAX jets a month that it could not deliver, and the FAA had not yet received the final software package.
The NTSB issued safety recommendations finding that Boeing and the FAA had assumed pilots would recognise and respond to an uncommanded trim input within seconds, without testing how multiple alerts at once would affect them. It asked the FAA to require that design assumptions about pilot response be validated with real crews. The Joint Authorities Technical Review, an international panel of regulators, reported on 11 October with similar findings.
Indonesia’s investigators published their final report on Flight 610. They found that MCAS relied on a single faulty sensor, that pilots had no information about it, and that the jet had flown the previous evening with the same fault without being grounded. The report also cited maintenance at Lion Air and crew actions among the contributing factors.
Boeing handed Congress and the Transportation Department the transcript of the 2016 messages in which its chief technical pilot called MCAS “egregious”. It had given the document to the Justice Department months earlier. FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson sent Muilenburg a three-sentence letter demanding an immediate explanation of the content and of the delay in disclosing it. The FAA called the substance of the document concerning.
A year to the day after the Lion Air crash, Muilenburg testified to the Senate Commerce Committee. Senators pressed him on why Boeing had not told regulators about the test pilot messages. The next day, before the House Transportation Committee, chairman Peter DeFazio accused Boeing of a lack of candor all through this. Muilenburg said the company had made some mistakes in designing MCAS. The committee had about 500,000 pages of Boeing documents.
Boeing’s board removed Muilenburg, who had been seen as pressing the FAA for a quick end to the grounding. A week earlier Boeing had said it would halt MAX production in January 2020, with about 400 undelivered jets in storage. Chairman David Calhoun was named to succeed him from 13 January 2020.
David Calhoun became chief executive and said he saw opportunities for Boeing to be better, much better. Three days later the special committee on FAA certification delivered its report to the Transportation Secretary. Calhoun inherited a jet still grounded, a production line about to stop, and a criminal investigation in Texas.
Ethiopia’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau released an interim report on the first anniversary of the crash. It put the main cause on MCAS design and repeated nose-down commands after a sensor failure. The bureau said the crew had followed the procedures Boeing provided. Its investigation continued for nearly three more years.
In the week of 29 June FAA and Boeing pilots flew the certification flight tests on a MAX 7 out of Boeing Field, deliberately triggering the failure cases behind both crashes. The FAA said all conditions flown were satisfactory. The FAA had completed an initial audit of the new software two weeks earlier. A final software audit followed on 14 September.
After an 18-month investigation, the House Transportation Committee released a 238-page report on the MAX. It found production pressure, faulty assumptions about MCAS, a culture of concealment at Boeing, and FAA managers who overruled their own experts. Boeing’s own test pilot took more than 10 seconds to respond to an uncommanded MCAS activation, against the four seconds federal guidance assumes. He called the result catastrophic. Boeing did not share that data with the FAA.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson, a former airline pilot, flew a two-hour familiarization flight in the 737 MAX after completing the proposed pilot training. He had said he would not sign off on the jet until he had flown it himself. The Joint Operations Evaluation Board, with regulators from Brazil, Canada and Europe, had finished its work a week earlier.
Dickson signed the order rescinding the March 2019 grounding. The FAA issued an airworthiness directive requiring new flight control software, rerouted wiring and an angle-of-attack disagree alert on every jet, and set minimum training that included simulator time. The FAA kept the right to inspect and sign off each new MAX before delivery, a task it had previously delegated to Boeing.
Brazil’s Gol flew flight G34104 from São Paulo Guarulhos to Porto Alegre, the first revenue flight of a 737 MAX after recertification. Brazil’s regulator ANAC was the third to approve the jet’s return. Brazil had joined the FAA, Canada and Europe on the board that reviewed pilot training for the jet. The first U.S. passenger flight followed 20 days later.
American Airlines flew the first U.S. commercial 737 MAX flight in 21 months, from Miami to New York LaGuardia. Airline executives and journalists were on board. Days earlier an aircraft certification reform law was signed as part of the year-end spending bill, tightening how manufacturers act on the FAA’s behalf. Southwest Airlines, the largest MAX customer, brought the jet back in March 2021.
The Justice Department charged Boeing with conspiracy to defraud the United States over the FAA evaluation of the MAX and agreed not to prosecute if Boeing paid $2.5 billion and tightened its compliance program for three years. Most of the money, $1.77 billion, went to airline customers. The families of the 346 dead got a $500 million fund. Families were not consulted before the deal, a point that would keep the case alive for four more years.
Transport Canada lifted its prohibition on the 737 MAX, with extra Canadian conditions including a pilot option to switch off the stick shaker when it activates in error. WestJet and Air Canada, two of the largest MAX operators outside the United States, prepared their fleets to return. Canada had grounded the jet on 13 March 2019, the same day as the FAA.
EASA issued an updated airworthiness directive allowing the 737 MAX back into European skies. The UK Civil Aviation Authority issued a matching decision at about the same time. EASA said it had run its own flight tests and its own review of the design rather than relying on the FAA. It required pilots to complete simulator training before flying the jet again.
India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation rescinded its 2019 grounding order, clearing SpiceJet to fly its MAX jets again after extra checks and training. SpiceJet was the largest MAX operator in India when the jet was grounded in March 2019. Its jets had been parked for two and a half years, and it was required to complete modifications and pilot simulator training before flying them.
A federal grand jury in Fort Worth indicted Mark Forkner, Boeing’s former 737 MAX chief technical pilot, on two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts and four counts of wire fraud. Prosecutors alleged he gave the FAA false and incomplete information about MCAS and withheld its expansion, which led the FAA to drop MCAS from the July 2017 training report. He was the only person charged in connection with the MAX. He pleaded not guilty.
China’s Civil Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive setting out the changes required for the 737 MAX to fly again in China, the first regulator to ground the jet and the last major one to clear it. The return in China was expected to take months more, as airlines completed modifications and training on a fleet that had been parked since March 2019.
Indonesia lifted its ban on 737 MAX operations by its airlines and in its airspace, three years after the Lion Air crash off Karawang. Indonesia was one of the last major markets to clear the jet. Airlines there had to complete the FAA modifications and simulator training first, more than two and a half years after the jet was first grounded in Indonesian airspace on 11 March 2019.
A federal jury in Fort Worth found Mark Forkner not guilty on all four remaining wire fraud counts after a trial of less than a week. The judge had dismissed the aircraft parts counts before trial. He was the only individual charged in connection with the MAX. No Boeing employee or executive was convicted of a crime over the jet, and Boeing itself remained under the 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.
Boeing agreed to pay $200 million and Muilenburg $1 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that they misled investors about the MAX. Neither admitted nor denied the findings. A month after the Lion Air crash Boeing had told the public the MAX was as safe as any airplane that has ever flown the skies, while it had already identified MCAS as a safety risk.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth ruled that the Justice Department violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by negotiating the 2021 Boeing deal without consulting families of the people killed. He found the 346 deaths were a direct result of Boeing’s crime. The ruling gave families legal standing in the case, though not yet a remedy.
Ethiopia’s accident bureau issued its final report on Flight 302, keeping MCAS design as the cause. The NTSB said the same day the report linked to an earlier and now outdated version of its comments and left out the latest ones. The NTSB’s comments focused on human factors, including the crew’s handling of speed and trim. The French BEA also published objections.
O’Connor wrote that despite Boeing’s egregious criminal conduct, federal law did not let him overturn the deferred prosecution agreement or appoint a monitor. The families had asked him to appoint an independent monitor and to make Boeing appear in court. The agreement had 11 months left to run. If Boeing kept to it, the conspiracy charge would be dismissed in January 2024.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a 737 MAX 9 about two months old, lost a door plug about six and a half minutes after leaving Portland, at roughly 16,000 feet. The crew returned and landed at 5:27 p.m. All 177 aboard survived. Three passengers had minor injuries. The deferred prosecution agreement was two days from expiring. The plug had been built by Spirit AeroSystems in Malaysia and the fuselage in Wichita.
The FAA issued an emergency airworthiness directive grounding every 737 MAX 9 fitted with a mid-cabin door plug pending inspection. Alaska and United, the two U.S. operators, found loose hardware on other jets. It was the first FAA grounding of a MAX since the jet returned to service in November 2020, and it fell on the day after the blowout.
A resident reported finding the door plug in a backyard in the Cedar Mill area near Oregon Route 217. NTSB investigators recovered it two days after the blowout. The jet had flown over the Beaverton area west of Portland when the plug blew out. The plug had come off cleanly, which suggested to investigators that the bolts meant to hold it in place had never been fitted.
The FAA approved an inspection process for the grounded MAX 9s. Alaska resumed flights on 26 January and United on 27 January. The FAA also barred Boeing from raising 737 production above 38 jets a month until it was satisfied with quality controls. The cap stayed in place for 21 months.
The NTSB’s preliminary report found that the four bolts securing the door plug were missing when the jet left the factory. The plug had been opened in Renton to repair damaged rivets and closed without them. Boeing could not produce paperwork showing who removed the plug or who put it back.
An expert panel set up under the 2020 certification reform law reported that Boeing’s safety culture still fell short despite its efforts, and that workers feared retaliation for reporting problems. Two days later the FAA gave Boeing 90 days to produce a plan to fix its manufacturing quality and safety. Boeing delivered it in late May.
An FAA audit of 737 MAX production at Boeing and at fuselage maker Spirit AeroSystems found multiple failures to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements. Spirit built the 737 fuselage in Wichita and shipped it by rail to Renton. Boeing had spun the Wichita plant off as Spirit in 2005.
The FBI sent letters to passengers on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 saying they may be victims of a crime, as the Justice Department reviewed whether Boeing had breached the 2021 agreement. Federal prosecutors had a grand jury in Seattle gather evidence on the blowout. The letters said the case was under investigation and gave passengers information on their rights as possible victims.
Calhoun said he would leave as chief executive by the end of 2024. The head of the commercial airplanes unit left at once and the board chairman did not stand for re-election. Stephanie Pope took over Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Boeing’s headquarters had moved from Chicago to Arlington, Virginia, in 2022.
The Justice Department told O’Connor that Boeing had violated the deferred prosecution agreement by failing to design and enforce a compliance program to prevent and detect violations of fraud laws. The finding exposed Boeing to prosecution on the original conspiracy charge. The deadline for the agreement had passed in January, two days after the door plug blowout, and prosecutors now had to decide whether to try the company or negotiate a new deal.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told a Senate committee the agency’s oversight of Boeing before the blowout had been too hands-off. The FAA had added inspectors on the factory floors in Renton and Wichita. Five days later Calhoun apologised to families in the Senate hearing room. Some senators said Boeing deserved prosecution.
Boeing announced a $4.7 billion deal to buy Spirit AeroSystems, the supplier that built the MAX fuselage and the door plug. Boeing said the deal would bring fuselage production back under its own quality system, 19 years after it sold the Wichita plant. Airbus agreed to take over Spirit’s plants that built Airbus parts. The deal needed approval from regulators in the United States and Europe.
The Justice Department said Boeing had agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States over how it misled regulators about MAX pilot training. The deal included a fine of up to $487.2 million and an independent monitor. Families asked O’Connor to reject it and send Boeing to trial.
Boeing’s board named Kelly Ortberg, a former head of Rockwell Collins, as chief executive from 8 August. Ortberg said he would base himself in Seattle, near the factories, rather than in Arlington. He took over a company that had lost money for years, faced a contract vote by its machinists and still had its guilty plea before a federal judge.
The NTSB released interviews with Renton factory workers who said they were pressured to work fast and assigned jobs they were not qualified for. Some described confusion over who was responsible for documenting when a door plug was opened. The interviews became part of the NTSB’s final findings on the door plug.
About 33,000 machinists in Washington state and Oregon walked out, stopping production of the 737 MAX, 777 and 767. The strike lasted more than seven weeks. Workers approved a contract in November with a 38% raise over four years. The strike cost Boeing billions and pushed back its plan to raise output past 38.
O’Connor rejected the plea agreement. He objected that the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies could influence the choice of the independent compliance monitor, and that the court had too little role in overseeing it. Prosecutors and Boeing went back to negotiating. The rejection left the conspiracy charge pending, with no agreed fine, no monitor and no trial date.
After several extensions, O’Connor set a trial date of 23 June 2025 on the conspiracy charge against Boeing. The date gave the Justice Department, now under a new administration, three months to try the case or settle it. A trial would have put the 2016 test pilot messages and the FAA evaluation before a jury. Families had pressed for a public trial since 2021.
The Justice Department said it had reached a non-prosecution agreement under which Boeing would pay or invest more than $1.1 billion, covering a fine, a fund for families of the crash victims and spending on safety and quality. Prosecutors would move to dismiss the charge. Boeing would choose its own compliance consultant instead of accepting an independent monitor.
At a board meeting in Washington, the NTSB found that Boeing’s failure to train, guide and oversee factory workers, together with ineffective FAA inspections and audits, let the MAX 9 leave Renton without the door plug bolts. Chair Jennifer Homendy said the flight crew’s actions ensured everyone survived. The board issued recommendations to Boeing and the FAA on factory oversight. The hearing came 18 months after the blowout.
O’Connor heard the government’s motion to dismiss the conspiracy charge. More than a dozen relatives spoke, asking him not to let Boeing buy its freedom. Nearly 100 families opposed the agreement. The Justice Department said families of 110 victims supported a resolution or did not oppose it. O’Connor said he would rule later. He had rejected the previous plea agreement nine months before.
The FAA lifted the 21-month cap and let Boeing raise 737 MAX production from 38 to 42 jets a month after inspectors reviewed the production lines. Administrator Bryan Bedford called Ortberg to confirm the new rate. In September the FAA had partly restored Boeing’s authority to issue airworthiness certificates for new MAX jets and proposed a $3.1 million fine for violations between 2023 and 2024.
A jury in federal court in Chicago began hearing the first civil trial over Flight 302, to decide what Boeing owed the family of a United Nations consultant killed in the crash. Families of three other victims settled before trial. Boeing had settled most of the dozens of wrongful death suits filed in 2019.
O’Connor granted the Justice Department’s motion and dismissed the conspiracy charge. He wrote that the deal fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public, but that he could not block a dismissal because he disagreed with prosecutors. He found the government had not acted in bad faith. Some families said they would appeal.
The Chicago jury found Boeing owed more than $28 million to the family of the UN consultant. With a separate settlement and interest, Boeing’s total payment to the family reached $35.8 million. Lawyers said fewer than a dozen Flight 302 lawsuits remained unresolved. It was the first jury award against Boeing over either MAX crash. The criminal case had been dismissed six days earlier.
Boeing closed its purchase of Spirit AeroSystems’ Boeing work, bringing 737 fuselage production in Wichita back in house along with plants in Dallas and Tulsa. Part of Spirit’s Belfast operation became a separate subsidiary, Short Brothers. Regulators had required divestments first, including the plant in Subang, Malaysia, where the Alaska door plug was made. The European Commission approved the deal in October and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on 4 December.
Boeing reported that certification flight testing of the 737 MAX 7 and MAX 10 was complete, nine years after the MAX 8 entered service. The two variants had been held up by an engine anti-ice flaw and a redesigned angle-of-attack sensor system. Boeing also said it had started moving 737 production toward 47 a month and opened a fourth line, the North Line, at low rate.
The FAA certified the 737-7, the smallest MAX, with 135 to 160 seats and a range of up to 3,800 nautical miles. Southwest Airlines is the launch customer. Boeing changed the engine anti-ice system after flight tests showed a possible issue. The MAX family order book stood above 7,200 jets, with more than 2,300 delivered.
The FAA certified the 737-10, the largest MAX, and issued a production limitation record allowing Boeing to start building it. The MAX 10 held nearly 1,500 orders, second only to the MAX 8. Certification came eight years after the Lion Air crash, under the stricter rules Congress passed in 2020.
Boeing reported 124 737 deliveries in the third quarter of 2026, up from 121 a year earlier, and 367 in the first nine months. It said the program was progressing toward stable production of 47 a month. Both new variants were now certified. Boeing named no further FAA rate approval in the report.