Europe regulator says it would pull Boeing approval if needed

The acting head of Europe's aviation regulator said on Wednesday the agency would halt its indirect approval of Boeing's jet production if warranted, but he feels reassured that the plane maker is tackling its latest safety crisis.

In an interview with Reuters, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency's, or EASA, acting executive director, Luc Tytgat, gave the first public indication that international cooperation underpinning global airplane production was being tested by the ongoing crisis as it rarely has been.

Asked if EASA would be prepared to stop recognizing U.S. production safety approvals declaring that Boeing jets are built safely, Tytgat said, "If need be, yes."

Boeing has been under mounting pressure over factory quality control since Jan. 5, when a door plug tore off a 737 MAX 9 jet in mid-air in an incident blamed on missing bolts.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, said last week an audit of Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystems found multiple instances of poor controls.

Under a transatlantic pact, the FAA and EASA regulate the factories of their respective plane makers — Boeing and Airbus — and recognize each other's safety approvals.

However, if one side loses confidence in the other's compliance checks, it can call for consultations and, if those fail, suspend recognition after a pause of 30 days.

Such steps are rare.

"All the tools must be implementable as soon as we see the justification or situation that requires us to take appropriate measures," Tytgat said, adding that no such action was imminent.

EASA's influence over the design of Boeing planes has grown following the MAX crashes, but it has relatively few ways to increase its monitoring of the production of existing Boeing models other