US aviation chief red lights Boeing 737 Max until 2020

ANKARA

U.S. regulators will not likely give a green light to Boeing 737 Max airplanes to fly until 2020, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Wednesday.

"Like I said there are a number of processes, milestones, that have to be completed," Steve Dickson told the CNBC network. "If you just do the math, it’s going to extend into 2020."

Noting that there is no clear timeline for when the 737 Max will be re-certified, Dickson said that there are 10 to 11 milestones left to complete before it can be approved.

The return date of the troubled aircrafts has been repeatedly postponed, however, even if the 737 Max gets the approval of the FAA, Boeing will have to take planes that have been grounded since March and train thousands of pilots.

"We’re going to follow every step of the process, however long that takes," he added.

Dickson stressed that his team is currently reviewing the plane’s software and "the validation of how the software was developed."

Boeing's top-selling aircraft model was grounded worldwide after two crashes that cost hundreds of lives, and hit the company billions of dollars financially.

On March 10, Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET-302 crashed shortly after taking off from an Addis Ababa airport, killing all 157 on board.

The model was also involved in an October crash outside of Jakarta, Indonesia. All 189 people on board Lion Air Flight JT610 were killed.

Many countries, including the U.S., Turkey, Russia and Iran, grounded the model.