Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) has repudiated an Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) recommendation to revoke the airworthiness certificate of all B737 aircraft operating within the Russian Federation. Akin to the NTSB in the United States, MAK is responsible for the certification as well as airworthiness of aircraft across the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

In its decree issued last week, MAK said Rosaviatsia had failed to adequately address concerns pertaining to the B737's elevator safety, blamed as a primary cause for the crash of a Tatarstan Air (U9, Kazan Int'l) B737-500 in Kazan Int'l in late 2013 which killed all 50 occupants on-board. MAK said it would only reinstate the certificate once Rosaviatsia and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had issued a formal notice attesting to the safety and airworthiness of all B737s registered in the the country.

Rosaviatsia subsequently refuted MAK's authority to institute the revocation and called a meeting on Friday, November 6 with representatives of local airlines, the Ministry of Transport, the Federal Service for the Supervision of Transport (Rostransnadzor), Boeing (BOE, Chicago O'Hare), MAK chairwoman Tatyana Anodina, and the head of MAK's Aircraft Registry section, Vladimir Bespalov, to help resolve the matter.

In a statement, Rosaviatsia's director general Alexander Neradko admonished MAK for its "unprofessional" approach to the matter alleging it had used an outdated report as the basis for its recommendation. As such, Neradko said there were no reasons to suspend B737 operations.

"The meeting was unanimous in the fact that at present the grounds for the termination of operation of Boeing 737 aircraft, which are registered in other countries as well as on the State Aircraft Register of the Russian Federation, are not valid," he said. "Therefore, the operation of Boeing 737 aircraft in Russia will continue on the same basis as before."

According to Reuters, MAK rescinded its recommendation as of Friday afternoon.

The ch-aviation aircraft database shows there are 181 B737 aircraft in service with twenty-three Russian operators.