FAA says seats on hundreds of Boeing 737 MAX jets may need inspections

By Dan Catchpole

SEATTLE, July 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday that seats on hundreds of Boeing 737 MAX jets registered in the U.S. may require inspections ​in case they were incorrectly installed and needed to ‌be fixed.

If not corrected, the seats could injure passengers and crew members during an emergency landing or block the aisle and slow an evacuation, the agency said.

The FAA’s proposed airworthiness directive issued on Monday would apply to 453 jets registered ‌in ​the U.S. The agency only has jurisdiction over ⁠U.S. airlines, but foreign ⁠regulators typically follow FAA directives if applicable.

Nearly 2,300 737 MAX jets are in service around the world, including 823 in the U.S., according to aviation advisory and intelligence firm IBA.

The proposed directive comes ​as Boeing works to improve its production quality and boost output under CEO Kelly Ortberg. Production quality problems were revealed in ⁠early 2024 when a door plug panel ⁠blew out of a nearly new Alaska Air 737 ​MAX in flight.

The FAA said in the airworthiness directive proposal that it ​received a report that some passenger seat assemblies were ‌not correctly installed in the seat tracks.

That meant the assemblies could disengage from the seat tracks if there was an increased load, turbulence or an emergency landing, the FAA said.

There could be up to 69 ⁠track-mounted passenger seat assemblies on each 737 MAX plane, and the issue would take an estimated one work hour to inspect and then an hour ⁠to fix each ‌assembly and required no parts, the FAA said. ⁠Airlines might be able to have multiple employees inspecting ​seats ‌simultaneously, greatly reducing the total time for each ​aircraft.

It did ⁠not say how quickly airlines would need to correct the issue.

A Boeing spokesperson said the planemaker issued guidance to operators about the issue in December 2025.

“We support the FAA making that guidance mandatory,” the spokesperson said in an email.

(Reporting by Dan Catchpole in Seattle; Editing by Christian Schmollinger ​and Jamie Freed)