The federal government said that seats on hundreds of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft may need to be inspected.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that the seats may have been installed incorrectly in the seat tracks and will need to be fixed, Reuters reported.
They can disengage from the track if there is an increased load, turbulence or an emergency landing, the FAA said.
They could injure a passenger or crew member during an emergency landing or block an aisle during an evacuation, the FAA said.
There are up to 69 track-mounted assemblies on each aircraft, with about an hour to inspect and another hour to fix each assembly. No parts are needed to correct the issues, and multiple crews can work simultaneously on one plane.
The cost before reinstallation would be about $2.7 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The directive, if accepted, would affect 453 jets that are registered in the U.S., as the agency has jurisdiction only over U.S. airlines. Foreign regulators usually follow American guidelines if they apply.
There are almost 2,300 Boeing 737 MAX jets worldwide, with 823 in the U.S.
The directive, which affects about a fifth of the total MAX aircraft according to The Wall Street Journal, was welcomed by Boeing.
The company has had several safety incidents over the past few years, including a door plug coming off mid-flight in 2024 on an Alaska Airlines plane and, more recently, a window breaking and a passenger being partially sucked out on a Ryanair flight, the newspaper reported.
Earlier this month, the FAA granted Boeing the ability to self-certify jets as airworthy after back-to-back crashes in 2019 that involved software problems, The Associated Press reported.
© 2026 Cox Media Group
