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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

I haven't done the napkin math but I'm going to guess scrapping 500 jets would bankrupt the company (or at least trigger a too big to fail bailout).

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Convert them to cargo. Amazon could probably scoop them up for pennies on the dollar for a new Prime Air fleet.

> Amazon could probably scoop them up for pennies on the dollar for a new Prime Air fleet.

If Boeing can't afford to scrap 500 jets, it probably can't afford to sell 500 jets at a 95% loss.

I mean, Boeing’s market cap is ~$95B. If we’re in a fantasy land where Amazon is going to buy that many planes they might as well just buy the whole damn company.

They wouldn't pass cargo certification as well.

Nobody likes a cargo plane falling on them.

Nobody likes to fly a plane that falls.

The PR fail with the 737 MAX might also bankrupt the company if no one wants to fly on them. I know what I would do as CEO facing those two dire futures.

What do you do if you don't want to fly a particular plane, but both direct connections for a trip you need to make are flying it?

Fly with a different airline? Don't fly at all? Take the train?

I already use sites like seatguru.com to work out the best seats on flights - I guess I'll now be checking to see if it is a boeing plane or not before booking.

Last minute aircraft swaps are pretty common, so you would have to have plans for that also.

Pick airlines that don't have any 737 Maxes in their fleet.

Which I think is only Delta in the US

Delta, JetBlue, Frontier, Spirit, and Allegiant come to mind. None of the carriers that fly regional jets for American and United have 737s of any sort. If the PR is that bad both Alaska, American, and United are in a much better position to scrap their MAXs than Southwest.

Now if the 787 is grounded or loses ETOPS certification, that'll be a much bigger hit for the big US airlines.

Yeah, pretty much I guess. Delta seems to be the only major one missing from this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...

JetBlue?

I'll fly on them. No problem.

And the rest: "As of January 31, 2019, Boeing had 5,011 firm orders from 79 identified customers for the 737 MAX" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...

4,500 orders (edit: potentially) cancelled, any thoughts what that would do to planned income?

I suspect not, Boeing has something like 8.5 billion dollars of cash on hand.

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