Originally Posted by
rustykettel
I imagine whatever plans AS had just got altered after the MAX grounding.
Maybe, but then again maybe not. The community and business ties between AS are very strong:
https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...ifficult-time/
I'd bet that Alaska was still figuring it out prior to the Ethiopian disaster. There are some areas where keeping deadlines and communicating with the customer base (guest base?) have significant value, but I think properly negotiating the best prices/terms they can get for new planes will be taking precedence over anything else in this particular matter, regardless of publicly-predicted timelines. Alaska has more leverage than they usually do right now, because they are negotiating as a carrier with multiple options, without having had to break trust with Boeing or build a whole Airbus operation themselves to get there.
Having said that, although I doubt any plans were instantly altered by the MAX mess, I do think it'll affect whatever process was already happening. (I hear that 49 MAX delivery slots are about to become available, if someone were to happen to want to replace a subfleet of, say, 50-to-70-ish frames.)