Comment by linkjuice4all | Hacker News Reader

Comment by linkjuice4all | Hacker News Reader

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Haven't seen it mentioned yet - but there are several reasons why airlines continue to buy from Boeing - specifically the 737 variants.

- The pilots are already trained (this is a big one and is part of the reason behind the MCAS debacle - new features mean retraining which costs money and limits which crews can fly which aircraft) [0]

- The 737 generally fits easily at a lot of airports since it's been around for a while - no need to reconfigure your gates/jet ways/etc to accommodate another aircraft at your gates)

- Airlines more recently prefer twin engine jets for better fuel economy and some changes in regulations [1]

- The MAX upgrade to the 737 platform was mostly to jam larger, more fuel-efficient engines into an existing airframe to save on manufacturing, certification, and training costs (see first point)

- In the US many airlines have shifted to single-aisle "mid-sized" planes for domestic routes due to deregulation around direct service - instead airlines can use a hub-and-spoke model with several connecting flights as opposed to only providing direct routes with enough demand to fill a plane [2]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/2/18518176/boeing-737-max-cr...

[1] https://simpleflying.com/two-engines-vs-four-engines/

[2] https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/ai...

In addition, some airlines, such as Southwest, fly only 737s, taking consistency in training and maintenance to the max.

Wonder how that will work out for Southwest after this.

Sometime in 2023 Alaska Airlines completed their efforts to sell off all their Airbus and Bombardier Q400 aircraft. Alaska acquired Virgin America and its all-Airbus fleet in 2016, and the Q400s were from their Horizon Air operations. The company sold the Airbus aircraft to American and retired the Bombardiers.

The reason given at the time was the desire to simplify maintenance and parts logistics.

Now Alaska's fleet is all 737, a mix of MAX and NG models. The MAX is about a quarter of their fleet, so the current grounding has hurt them.

I've been thinking about this one, but I'm not sure it makes sense. Let's say that Alaska flew half Airbus. And let's say half their 737 fleet is MAX's. (E.g. a quarter of the fleet, same number they have today.) And as time goes on, it becomes increasingly 737MAX as they upgrade to get better fuel efficiency.

How would this help them? A large % of the fleet is still grounded.

This math is wrong. The MAX is a quarter of the all-737 fleet. If Alaska flew half Airbus, an a quarter of 737s were grounded, then it would a quarter of half, or an eighth. You're suggesting that the MAX would make up half their 737 fleet, "as time goes on", but then that would be true in an all 737 fleet as well. Either way you do it, the result of having some Airbus models would be a smaller portion of the fleet grounded.

You're proposing to replace the non-MAX 737s with Airbus, but I think it would make a lot more sense to replace the 737 MAXs with Airbus. That way, nothing gets grounded.

What's missing from that explanation is that Virgin got horrific lease terms on their fleet because they were a fledgling airline. Had Alaska been the one to lease them the terms would've been much better and the financial benefit to dumping them would've bee much smaller.

As Alaska is based in Seattle, they've been pushing this ridiculous all-Boeing nonsense for a while. Horizon still exists as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alaska. Their fleet is all Embraer. In fact I'd be hard pressed to think of a time when Alaska was ever all Boeing.

> As Alaska is based in Seattle, they've been pushing this ridiculous all-Boeing nonsense for a while

I do kind of wonder about the relationship with Boeing, with Boeing Field and the plant just up the road from Alaska's HQ at Sea-Tac. Cynically speaking I'd guess that Alaska and Boeing CEOs are golf buddies or something. Boeing's HQ is is now in Chicago (which may be part of the problem, as the article notes) so maybe not.

I flew on an Alaska branded Embraer craft a few days ago. Do you mean only those operated directly by Alaska? I think mine was operated by Sky West.

Yeah, Alaska operating as Sky West. It's kind of like outsourcing.

> In the US many airlines have shifted to single-aisle "mid-sized" planes for domestic routes due to deregulation around direct service - instead airlines can use a hub-and-spoke model with several connecting flights as opposed to only providing direct routes with enough demand to fill a plane

I think this is no longer strictly true. In the early days of deregulation, yes, absolutely, airlines went to a hub-and-spoke model and eliminated a bunch of their direct routes.

But it turns out that customers don't actually like this, and they'll leave for a different airline that has the direct (or at least more-direct) routes they want.

So I believe it's sorta in the middle now: sure, airlines have hubs, and they don't do quite as many direct routes as they used to. But it's also common for there to be direct flights between airports that aren't what you might call hubs.

(Note that the article you linked to in support of this point is from 2001; a lot has changed over the past 23 years.)

I agree. The trend in Europe is actually the opposite, with point-to-point now considered the winning approach. Consumer preference for this modality is actually a significant factor in the dramatic rise of low-cost carriers (Ryanair, easyJet, etc). Hub-and-spoke is obviously still around, particularly for intercontinental flights, but the commercial failure of the giant A380 indicates where the market actually is.

The failure of the A380 still surprises me. Wasn't the 747 super successful? What's wrong with the A380? All of a sudden, now that Airbus has the biggest plane, big planes aren't good anymore?

I think it was a combination of cost, incompatibility (it typically required airports to fix their runways to accommodate it), and the above-mentioned fact that Airbus' core European market had largely moved towards low-cost PtP. The A380 makes sense only for hub-and-spoke, and/or flights over 4-5h. COVID was the nail in the coffin.

Airports also had to raise a new lounge/gate floor, and buy new ~double height jetbridges to access the upper deck of the A380.

The 747 was largely successful because of its then unprecedented range and cheaper fuel prices at the time, as well as its easy conversion to a high capacity freighter. That’s why today, with much more fuel-efficient and long range 787s and A350s, Boeing had to quit making the passenger version in 2017 and the freighter version last year. And even in the decades before cancelling, Boeing barely managed to sell a handful.

The A380 had long range, but not to the extent of the 787 or A350, and it didn’t have their fuel efficiency, and there are structural choices that make freighter conversion difficult (like a middle floor too weak for cargo without reinforcement) and less economical in the first place (more volume available than weight it can support).

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