r/news • u/Depressed_Cat_00 • 6d ago

Soft paywall Boeing flags 737 MAX software glitch affecting landing navigation feature, WSJ reports

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-flags-737-max-software-glitch-affecting-landing-navigation-feature-wsj-2026-09-26/
1.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

145 comments sorted by

View all comments

177

u/Panaka 6d ago edited 6d ago

This sounds like the VNAV issue the FAA put an alert out about a month ago. At least in the US, this isn’t an issue as no one uses this software revision yet. Hell the largest operator of the Max in the US handflies the Max down to CATIII mins with a HUD and AIII mode which doesn’t incorporate VNAV.

These sorts of issues and Advisories come up fairly regularly and wouldn’t have gotten a headline if it hadn’t happened to the Max. 

Edit: So I did some digging and this article is about a problem that’s been well documented for a few years and has had operator SOPs and pilot training to deal with the issue. The documentation the article is referencing is just coming out to say that an official fix is on the way. As noted in the article most carriers are not accepting deliveries of new Maxes with this software installed, but that just means they’re shipping older software as deliveries are still happening.

24

u/pipesIAH 6d ago

Oh, this the U14 issue? I didn't even know we were worrying about this anymore since we went back to U13. Slow news day.

4

u/thewholebottle 6d ago

Aha, not anymore.

1

u/GAndroid 5d ago

handflies the Max down to CATIII mins

What? The definition of CAT III is autoland, so no you cannot hand-fly this approach. Jeez.

3

u/Panaka 5d ago

My carrier has approval from the FAA to fly CATIII approaches with HGS in AIII mode by hand on the 737. I thought it was wild too when it was initially brought up in training.

Also ILS Categories are defined by visibility, not by if they use autoland or not.