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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

How long until airlines start to advertise that they don't have 737 MAX in their fleets? Or no Boeing planes at all?

I don't think airlines will do that, because having at least two (more would be of course better) competing manufacturers in the market is better for them, so they have to hope that Boeing survives even if they don't currently use their planes...

If there is a way to be more profitable this year, with a potential issue several years away, what percentage of companies would take that chance?

Airlines take the quick money every time as far as I can tell.

It is like Samsung shitposting on Apple about removing the 3.5 mm audio port, enjoy the marketing stunts, and then remove it themselves a coupl eof years later. All companies and their PR teams know the memory retention of their audience is tiny. I'm honestly surprised the airlines that dont have Boeing 737 in their fleet are not taking this opportunity to make a splash yet.

The recent 737 Max issue doesn't seem particularly aircraft specific. If the QA and culture have gotten that bad then it could happen to 787 just as easily.

I doubt however this will ever move the needle in terms of passenger numbers. Even for those people who are aware of the issues, a tiny minority of them would pay more to avoid a particular aircraft model.

> I doubt however this will ever move the needle in terms of passenger numbers.

Maybe, but these things have a momentum and it’s very clear things are moving in an uncomfortable direction for Boeing.

Yup, some flights are going to be extremely unlikely to change and are basically always 100% booked. QF10 London-Perth (Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner) will not be affected at all by a non-trivial percentage of people refusing to fly it. There's not enough supply on those routes and Qantas can fly whatever they want there.

Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian airlines and Azul Brazilian only operate Airbus aircraft

Yea but Qantas never crashed.

QANTAS have had 14 fatal accidents over their history.

The most common claim is that they have never suffered a jet hull loss, which is technically correct as they paid over $100 million to repair 747 VH-OJH instead of letting it be written-off:

https://imgur.com/a/LucEz

I sometimes wonder if this is all just hubris or if there are genuine lessons Qantas could share with the rest of the industry.

Certainly they have a good enough maintenance program to avoid something like AS261 but everything else seems like it would involve a lot of luck.

It’s a quote from Rain Man and it was not true at the time of the movie either. Great marketing.

Randomly picked Hawaiian airlines to see what mechanical failures their aircraft have had and I get this list:

- Most recent in 2023: significant problems and disruptions due to problems with the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engines in their A320neo aircraft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G

- Mid-air diversions: several Hawaiian Airlines flights forced to divert to different airports due to mechanical problems. One example is Flight 383 from Honolulu to Kauai and had to return to Honolulu shortly after takeoff due to unspecified issues - https://liveandletsfly.com/hawaiian-airlines-lax-diversion/

- 1994: Flight 481 experience complete hydraulic system failure en route from Maui to Honolulu - https://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/12/25/news/story3.htm...

etc.

Azul also has 40 ATRs and (naturally) Embraer. They actually do operate 2 Boeing 737-400 for cargo use.

>>Or no Boeing planes at all?

That will never happen, the federal government would never allow it, and they have many avenues to ensure it

1. All Future bailouts of Airlines could be contingent on them buying Boeing Aircraft

2. Direct Bail out of Boeing to make them the most inexpensive plane to buy

3. Regulation to prevent advertisement of aircraft type

4. Increase import tariffs or other protectionism to make Airbus and other manufacturers more expensive

Boeing is a national defense contractor and it too important to our national interests to be allowed to fail, if the 4 things I listed above do not happen something else will will prevent Boeing from Going under, or even losing market share.

Even if Boeing lost its entire civilian market as a result of this sort of thing (which is not plausible) it'd survive as military contractor; it might have to be restructured, and the shareholders would probably be wiped out, but it would survive. Note that Lockheed still exists.

And Boeing would likely not thank the US government for this sort of 'help', because it would be read as, essentially, a trade war, and provoke retaliation. Most of Boeing's market is outside the US.

And also, I mean, this already exists. There are large single supplier airlines. JetBlue is an all-Airbus airline. Southwest and Ryanair are all-Boeing.

Boeing's reputation in military circles seems to be, if anything, worse than it's civilian one.

Airlines also exist outside of US.

Ryan air exclusively uses 737 and as far as I know they only had 2 incidents, one being a fake bomb threat and the other (bird strikes) proving the plane was safe

It's (by far) the largest airline in Europe and the third largest in the world in term of passengers per year, I don't see them going anywhere because of the 737 max issues

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ryanair_accidents_and...

Except during the pre-flight safety presentation, the airlines generally don't want you thinking about safety at all. Simply advertising that they don't have a particular incident prone aircraft in their fleet makes customers think about all the things that could go wrong. A press release highlighting that they don't have that particular aircraft in their fleet during the news cycle of an incident should be sufficient enough.

Both Boeing and Airbus planes have had mechanical issues, and I don’t think it’s in any airline’s interest to start slinging shit about passenger safety.

I don’t think they would go for that. Airlines do not want customer to think about the possibility of a crash at all.

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