Originally Posted by flensr

Someone in another forum posted up something about a little snippet of legislation that changes the certification criteria starting in 2023, requiring a completely new alerting system. So if the FAA can manage to drag their feet on the max7 (and max10) certification until past the end of the year (Fiscal year if I recall correctly, so October), Boeing has to certify it as a new aircraft under new rules due to retrofitting them with the new alerting system.

Here's a little article discussing some of the problem: https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/...erting-system/

My bet is that someone is trying to kill SWA and/or force Boeing to get rid of the max. Like the rest of our government, there is probably someone with a huge pile of money behind all this pushing to require the MAX cockpit and workflow to be completely redesigned.

While I'm 100% in favor of killing off the 737, this is not the right way to do it. My preference would be to do it through airspace management efficiency/modernization requirements that can't be complied with using obsolete aircraft, or through market forces. Not by moving the goalposts in this way right at the end of the re-certification process of an existing aircraft that has had a pretty darn good safety record in the US for the last couple of decades, but which suffered a huge political hit due to crashes by barely qualified crews and slipshod maintenance outside the US.