FAA official echoes Boeing timeline for 737 Max return by December this year

Bloomberg

Boeing Co’s 737 Max aircraft, grounded since March after two fatal crashes in five months, should be back in the air by December, a top US regulator said.
It’s not possible to give an exact date as work progresses on safety fixes to the aircraft, Ali Bahrami, the Federal Aviation Administration’s associate administrator for aviation safety, said in an interview at a conference in Cologne, Germany.
While the FAA is “under a lot of pressure,” he said the Max will be returned to service “when we believe it will be safe,” following reviews of the design, flight testing and other checks.
Bahrami was reluctant to provide a timeline, but asked whether the plane would resume service this year or next, he said remarks by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg projecting a return by the end of 2019 sounded correct.
Knowing when the latest version of the 737 will fly again would help airlines contend with the disruption caused by the grounding of the narrow-body, Boeing’s most popular model. The FAA has said that there’s no time frame to sign
off on Boeing’s proposed fix for the jet. Muilenburg said on CNBC that he expected that the Max would be back in the air by year-end.
American Airlines Group has kept the plane off its schedule through September 3, while Southwest Airlines Co and United Continental Holdings Inc are looking at resuming Max flights in early August.
Boeing is finalising a software fix for a flight-control system malfunction linked to the accidents involving Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines, as well as proposed new pilot training.