Boeing Co said monday that it will temporarily stop producing its grounded 737 Max jet starting in january as it struggles to get approval from regulators to put the plane back in the air. The Chicago based company said production would halt at its plant with 12,000 employees in Renton, Washington, near Seattle. But it said it didn’t expect to lay off any workers at this time.
The move amounts to an acknowledgement that it will take much longer than Boeing expected to win approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other global regulators to fly the planes again.
The Max is Boeing’s most important jet, but it has been grounded since march after crashes in indonesia and ethiopia that killed a total of 346 people. The FAA told the company last week that it had unrealistic expectations for getting the plane back into service. Boeing has missed several estimates of a return date for the plane, and the company didn’t give a date on Monday.
