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Maybe! Looks like there've been 350 deliveries so far [1]. Are that many planes available on short notice to replace them? Airlines generally operate with 80% load factors, it'd be hard to just re-shuffle everyone.

The grounding and reaction may also shake people's faith in air travel in general, causing them to drive more even if planes were available. Bruce Schneier has a good write-up on this effect post 9/11 too. Humans are terrible at dealing with this kind of thing.

The reality is you're much more at risk in your Uber ride to the airport than you are aboard the 7M8.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Orders_and_deli...




I think in practice more of the flights will be replaced by other flights or not travelling than driving 2500 miles.

Commercial flying is safer on average than driving, but that's because of, not despite the extreme approach to safety concerns. (General aviation is actually substantially more dangerous than driving)


> Are that many planes available on short notice to replace them?

If there are, they'll have to wipe the dust off of them, and send type-rated crews into territories they're not familiar with day-to-day.

That, or defer maintenance of the existing fleet.

I'm unconvinced that this is the safe resolution, but that's what will happen.

At least the US and Canada allowed planes in-flight to land, instead of making them turnaround and come back anyway via non-revenue ferry flights.


Maintenance deferral is not an option (unless they're electively carrying out maintenance checks well ahead of OEM-specified intervals) and type-rated crews landing in unfamiliar territory happens on a daily basis and certainly isn't a risk factor comparable with a [possibly] flawed aircraft. If the delay's long enough to actually see parked aircraft brought into service, it'll largely be the same crews flying older 737s anyway.

Mostly people will just cancel their holidays or agree a teleconference because getting flights on that route at short notice is too difficult.


> type-rated crews landing in unfamiliar territory happens on a daily basis and certainly isn't a risk factor comparable with a [possibly] flawed aircraft.

Flying in/out of unfamiliar territory is a known risk. Whether the 737 MAX series is higher risk or not is an unknown risk because of insufficient sample sizes.

Hopefully some statistician will start tabulating P values so we can see if the confidence intervals overlap or not. Treat this situation like a new "better" drug for X where 2 users died in quick succession. Is there enough evidence to take it off the market or not? AFAIK, nobody has (yet).

>If the delay's long enough to actually see parked aircraft brought into service, it'll largely be the same crews flying older 737s anyway.

Sorta. On a Canadian airline, Westjet, the MAX is flying routes that are too far for the regular 737s without a fuel-stop (by my estimates). I'm booked for such a flight in 2 months. I'll get to learn what happens. I would have been happy to fly the MAX8 based on the current lack of evidence for grounding.




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