Professional Documents
Culture Documents
How The Bizarre Economics of Airplanes Raises The Stakes of The Boeing Fallout
How The Bizarre Economics of Airplanes Raises The Stakes of The Boeing Fallout
com
7-9 minutes
Southwest isn’t the only U.S. airline with 737 Max planes.
American Airlines has pulled its 24 Max 8 planes out of
service, which affects about 85 flights out of the airline’s
roughly 6,700 daily trips, and United has grounded 14
Max 9 planes (a similar model), which together account
for some 40 flights a day.
At this point, it’s not clear how long the grounding will
last, and while it is terrible publicity for Boeing, some
plane manufacturers have managed to fare all right after
their new aircraft has come under scrutiny. George
Hoffer, a transportation economist, pointed out to me
that the Douglas DC-6 and the Boeing 727 both went on
to have “stellar” careers after early incidents. So the 737
Max could yet recover—it just might get rebranded. “My
guess is that they will eventually … drop the Max” from
its name, Hoffer said. Though the true mark of success
would be for the plane’s name to go back to where it
was: out of the headlines and mostly unknown to
passengers.