new delhi union aviation minister j m scindia will on tuesday travel on a boeing 737 max according to spicejet the gurgaonbased airline had last week performed operational readiness flight on one of its 13 max and then flew its employees on a special flight to varanasi tuesdays special flight to gwalior with the minister and airline promoter ajay singh among others on board is being seen as a signal that indian aviation authorities have allowed the plane to fly after doing the required due diligence for safety spicejet will soon thereafter resume regular commercial flights using the maxacceptance of max by indias air travellers is crucial for boeing and its customer airlines while spicejet had placed order for 155 max some years ago and has so far got 13 of them billionaire investor rakesh jhunjhunwalas upcoming airline akasa has ordered 72 of these planes so the coming years could see lots of max flying here according to boeing as of now over 175 out of 195 global regulators have opened their airspace to the 737 max over 30 airlines have returned their fleets to service and those airlines have safely flown over 23 lakh commercial flights totalling more than 57 lakh flight hours the fleet has a schedule reliability rate of more than 99 boeing said in a statement regulators allowed the b737 max to fly again after carrying out the required hardware and software modification to ensure safety and its ungrounding started from december 9 2020 the max were globally grounded in march 2019 following two crashes one of indonesian lion air and other of ethiopian airlines in quick succession the two crashes had claimed the lives of 346 people on board these planeslast year boeing finalised software and hardware modifications to ensure safety on the max these changes were vetted and approved by foreign aviation regulators including those of country of manufacture usa eu uae singapore and uae indias directorate general of civil aviation had this august allowed the max to fly again upon satisfaction of applicable requirements for return to service meaning carrying out required changes to ensure safety the single aisle market in india is dominated by boeings rival arch airbus indian carriers currently have 540 single aisles of which 451 83 are airbus a320 family and 89 boeing 737s airbus has over 700 a320 family planes to be delivered over the next 78 years with a lions share going to indigo the worlds biggest customer of a320 neo new engine option family of planes there is a long waiting period for a new customer ordering this aircraft boeing dominates the relatively smaller wide body space in india with only two airlines air india and vistara operating twin aisles like b787 b777 and b747s