U.S. lawmakers decline to add Boeing 737 MAX exemption in defense bill

U.S. lawmakers late on Tuesday declined to add an extension to an annual defense bill of a looming deadline that would impose a new safety standard for modern cockpit alerts for two new versions of Boeing's best selling 737 MAX aircraft.

The U.S. planemaker has been lobbying to convince lawmakers to waive the deadline that affects its MAX 7 and MAX 10 airplanes and was imposed by Congress in 2020 after two fatal 737 MAX crashes killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.