By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that it had approved an inspection and maintenance process to allow grounded Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes to return to service but would not allow any ramp up of MAX production by the planemaker.
The agency halted flights on Jan. 6 following a mid-air emergency on an Alaska Airlines jet.
“The exhaustive, enhanced review our team completed after several weeks of information gathering gives me and the FAA confidence to proceed to the inspection and maintenance phase,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement.
The FAA said it would not grant any production expansion of Boeing’s best-selling MAX narrowbody family of jets, including the 737 MAX 9.
“We will not agree to any request from Boeing for an expansion in production or approve additional production lines for the 737 MAX until we are satisfied that the quality control issues uncovered during this process are resolved,” Whitaker said in the statement.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Leslie Adler and Jamie Freed)
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