They are the smallest and the largest members of the 737 MAX family, and for years they have been the two that would not cross the finish line. On 28 July 2026, Boeing said both the 737-7 (MAX 7) and 737-10 (MAX 10) have finally finished their certification flight testing.

That is not the same as being certified — the FAA still has to sign the paperwork — but it clears the single biggest technical hurdle standing between these jets and the airlines that ordered hundreds of them years ago.

Nearly a thousand flights

The MAX 10 team alone flew 976 certification flights: more than 2,060 hours in the air and roughly 1,040 hours of ground testing across three test aircraft. Engineers hammered the jet through wet-runway braking, maximum-energy rejected takeoffs, the redesigned 737 Engine Anti-Ice (EAI) system, and an enhanced Angle of Attack (eAoA) setup meant to cut down spurious cockpit warnings.

The final test was almost anticlimactic: an interiors check to confirm you can actually hear the lavatory smoke detector and the cabin speakers over everything else. Glamorous, no. Required, absolutely.

The 737-10 airborne during the MAX 10 flight-test programme. Video: AIN.

The pilot who flew it first and last

There was one nice piece of symmetry. The Boeing test pilot who flew the MAX 10’s final certification sortie, Dan Mangel, was also the man who took that exact airframe up on its very first flight four years earlier.

What is left, and who is waiting

With flight testing done, the programme now closes out its development assurance reviews and system safety assessments and hands the final data to the FAA. Boeing is holding to type certification in 2026 and first customer deliveries in 2027. The MAX 7 is actually a touch ahead of its bigger sibling, at roughly 95% of document submissions.

Plenty of airlines are tapping their feet. Southwest has a mountain of MAX 7s on order; United and Delta are among those waiting on the stretched MAX 10. And both the EAI fix and the eAoA upgrade proven on these test jets will now be built into every new MAX and retrofitted across the ones already flying.

After the years the MAX programme has had, “the boring interiors test is the last box to tick” is about the best headline Boeing could hope for.

Sources: Boeing (feature releases and Q2 2026 results, 28 July 2026); Aerospace America; Simple Flying; AeroTime.