Originally Posted by
emcampbe
yup, Im curious as to how booking on the MAX will change as well compared to other aircraft, and how much of a factor that is for various types of flyers.
The question is, if UA allows folks booked on a MAX to swap to another flight on another A/C type, how does this affect..well, everything. Does this change demand enough to affect the fares on a MAX vs. non-MAX flight? Does this change how they are scheduled, for example, so that any given route’s frequency of having a MAX is impacted (example: maybe UA intended to schedule all, say, SFO-PDX flights on a MAX, but now wants to split with other aircraft so people afraid of a MAX don’t feel the need to book away to another carrier.). How does this specifically affect Hawaii, since it is apparent that many flights there were apparently getting more of these? Down to the, does getting rid of these planes and waiting however long they need to to get their hands on A32X NEOs make more financial sense then keeping them. Because there is a line somewhere, where the cost-savings of having these planes is outweighed if X% of UA pax will simply refuse to fly it. So what is that line, and will UA hit it. And how much will Boeing do at that point. I wonder if a simulator training requirement will move that line, also.
Lots of people - particularly people who are over 50 - think that the world will be the same in the future, as it was in the past. Outside of the nationalist "if its not Boeing I'm not going" crowd, almost everyone was airplane agnostic in the past. Outside of a preference for the airbus twins vs the 737, I certainly never had a preference that was strong. And 20 years ago, it was practically impossible to know what A/C you would end up on.
Today, web-sites tell you the pitch of the seats and the A/C that will be used. As Airbus model for model now has wider cabins, I would expect them to push hard to get that information included into booking sites, and people who are internet savvy now have the information to avoid the MAX if they want to.
So while in the 70s the issues with the 727 quickly went away, and to a lesser extent they went away with the DC-10 - although that is not so clear, ultimately the AC was killed off by its poor reputation - I am not so sure that the MAX issues will fade so quickly. There is simply an ability of people to avoid flying on Boeing aircraft today that did not exist in the past, and the under 50s will in many cases seek out that information and act on it.
Put another way, brand damage to Boeing may have a cost to Boeing that it would not have had in another era.