Boeing and American Airlines have completed the first landing gear exchange on a 737 MAX, a milestone that extends Boeing’s long-standing Landing Gear Exchange Program to its latest generation of single-aisle aircraft.
The exchange demonstrates Boeing’s ability to provide fully overhauled and certified main and nose landing gear assemblies ready for installation, potentially reducing aircraft downtime and the need for airlines to hold costly spare gear.
Under the programme, Boeing overhauls and certifies landing gear assemblies before delivering them with the required installation kits. For the American Airlines exchange, the assemblies were supplied with installation kits, excluding wheels, tires and brakes.
Boeing said the completed swap validated the process from technical overhaul and documentation through delivery, demonstrating that the exchange model can be applied to the 737 MAX fleet.
The programme offers airlines an alternative to purchasing and storing expensive spare landing gear, while providing access to replacement assemblies when required.
Boeing is also expanding its global overhaul capacity and working with certified maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) partners to increase geographic coverage and reduce lead times.
The company’s near-term priorities include expanding its inventory of 737 MAX-capable exchange assemblies, adding forward-exchange capacity closer to customer operations and tracking downtime and cost data as the programme scales.
