It'd certainly be a disaster for international airlines or operators, and I'm fairly certain an extremely powerful statement in terms of catalyzing domestic pushback. To be frank, if I worked at the FAA, I'd be kicking and screaming to resolve any level of concern raised by engineers in good faith before giving the go ahead. It may not necessarily appear as such, but the FAA, while having taken a credibility hit, has not taken one severe enough to unseat it as a leading international authority.

If it goes ahead and gives the green light when the rest of the world isn't sold on it, then we can unambiguously say the entire regulatory institution is irredeemably defective.

At that point the only real fix is an absolutely amazing change in the Executive branch, or a Legislative solution; and I have doubts on the efficacy of the latter, since a regulator is only as good as the people staffing it at the best of times.

> To be frank, if I worked at the FAA, I'd be kicking and screaming to resolve any level of concern raised by engineers in good faith before giving the go ahead.

I agree and I'd like to add that in my opinion the airplane now needs to actually be better than its competitors.

If it isn't and there is another accident (big or small, that might or might not involve deaths but which might even slightly be related to MCAS or other systems having similar design flaws) then I think that there would be again another (bigger?) round of repercussions: for the plane itself, for Boeing and for the FAA.

Saying this because I imagine that a negative event might become a final public and/or political confirmation that 1) the FAA & Boing cannot be trusted and that 2) the airplane has just too many flaws that need to be addressed.

Therefore, to avoid this, the plane must be absolutely rock-solid otherwise if anything happens people will immediately ask Boeing and especially FAA "why did you create/approve this thing - are you incompetent and/or stupid and/or unscrupulous?".

A very interesting topic, in my opinion :)

The FAA really dropped the ball on the 737 MAX, and as a result EASA won't blanket accept FAA certification as in the past.

The irony being that the FAA bent over backwards to make it easier for Boeing to certify this aircraft, and they’ve probably done more damage to Boeing than anyone could’ve ever imagined.

Turns out competent safety regulation matters, who knew?

The 737 isn't really designed to fly longer international routes - it's mostly used for domestic short haul flights. However, the international market is absolutely gigantic, especially the Asian one, and not being able to fly 737s in countries other than the US would be a godsend for Airbus and a tremendous blow for Boeing.

The MAX reaches all the way to Brazil (non-stop) from the US and can open more flights Europe<>US/Canada as an example. It was a big selling point.

A big part of the Max’s sales proposition was that it shared a type certification with the old 737. This meant that pilots would need minimal retraining, and could easily swap back and forth between the two easily. This requirement is why the MCAS software wasn’t properly documented; to avoid expensive retraining requirements that would be unattractive to buyers.

Ignoring the training issue (which is already long gone), the inability to take the Max abroad would be a serious hindrance for sales. It means that it would require that airlines track them separately for routes, making sure to never take the Max 8 outside of America, which is exactly what Boeing was hoping not to do with the Max 8.