Comment by scottlamb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottlamb | Hacker News Reader

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> Honestly, back when the 737 MAX debacle happened, a lot of consumers claimed that they would stop flying aircrafts if they ran into 737 MAXs. And I don't think it happened in enough numbers - or even enough to make news. Sales went through the roof, everything kept working.

Is this kind of consumer revolt even really possible?

If you feel strongly enough that you refuse to fly altogether, then of course you can avoid flying on a 737 MAX. But I think most people did not feel the risk was that high. They just want to select "guarantee no 737 MAX" when booking a flight, and as far as I can tell that option doesn't exist.

Even if the flight is not a 737 MAX when you book, they can and sometimes do change aircraft, and as far as I know there's no option to get your money back when they do. If you show up and see it's a 737 MAX...you either get on or you lose your money, and have to find some other way to get where you're going, right?

If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.

Sure, there's a tiny chance they put a chartered jet in for your flight, but that's exceedingly rare.

> If you really, really want to avoid an aircraft type, you book with an airline that simply doesn't fly them.

How do you do that? And which companies does not have these today?

About half of airlines prefer Airbus planes, and it's pretty rare to have a mix of Boeing and Airbus AIUI.

> How do you do that?

By choosing to spend your money elsewhere.

> And which companies does not have these today?

- JetBlue, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Volaris, Breeze Airways

- easyJet, Wizz Air, Vueling, ITA Airways, IndiGo, AirAsia, Cebu Pacific, Air Arabia

- Middle East Airlines, Tunisair, flynas

All of the above have no Boeing aircraft in their fleet at all.

Emirates doesn't fly the 737, but does fly Boeing aircraft.

In 2013 there were approximately 24,000 737 flights per day[1] - likely more today. If narrowed to just the MAX variants, it's still thousands per day.

Two, albeit high profile, crashes out of all the daily MAX volume is simply not something to worry about - let alone influence your booking choices.

[1] - https://chinaerospace.oss-cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com/18.1%20%E6...

You're applying everyday casual risk analysis to the highly-regulated environment of commercial air transport, where the MAX crashes absolutely were out of the norm and well beyond accepted levels.

Bear in mind when the crashes occurred there were fewer than 100 MAX in service.

Until you are on the plane. Sorry, but reasonably people and countries expect zero crashes and any single crash is worth worrying about because shareholder money should not trump a single human life.

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