The US Federal Aviation Administration has said that seats on hundreds of Boeing 737 Max jets registered in the US may require inspections to verify whether they were incorrectly installed and needed to be fixed.
If not corrected, the seats could injure passengers and crew members during an emergency landing or block the aisle and slow an evacuation, the agency said. The FAA's proposed airworthiness directive issued on Monday would apply to 453 registered jets. The agency only has jurisdiction over US airlines, but foreign regulators typically follow FAA directives if applicable.
Nearly 2,300 737 Max jets are in service around the world, including 823 in the US, according to aviation advisory and intelligence firm IBA. The proposed directive comes as Boeing works to improve its production quality and boost output under chief executive Kelly Ortberg. Production quality problems were revealed in early 2024 when a door plug panel blew out of a nearly new Alaska Air 737 Max in flight.
The FAA said in the airworthiness directive proposal that it received a report that some passenger seat assemblies were not correctly installed in the seat tracks.
That means the assemblies could disengage from the seat tracks if there were an increased load, turbulence or an emergency landing, the FAA said. There could be up to 69 track-mounted passenger seat assemblies on each 737 Max plane, and the issue would take an estimated one work hour to inspect and then an hour to fix each assembly, and required no parts, the FAA said.
Airlines could have multiple employees inspecting seats simultaneously, reducing the total time for each aircraft. It did not say how quickly airlines would need to correct the issue.
A Boeing representative said the plane maker issued guidance to operators about the issue in December 2025.
“We support the FAA making that guidance mandatory,” the representative said in an email.
