bbinchi

Beautiful. I flew aboard N280AK as AS12/09DEC SEABOS and aboard N277AK operating AS15/10DEC BOSSEA. I was struck by how much more comfortable the experience was aboard those new airplanes than on the older "739" equipment. Particularly the lighting and the HVAC system are much improved. Those flights were my first aboard a "739" where I felt relaxed and not stuffy. I have been way too warm on older 737-990ER aircraft, which seem to have problematic HVAC systems. And the lavatories on the new airplanes are very well designed. They are, indeed, the narrowest lavs I've been in but the layout is smart and the new faucets work very well.

beckoa

I miss the configuration of the 739 lavs that AS was the launch customer of...

sdsearch

I think you misunderstood what was was being asked. It was not whether the plane would have PE, it was whether the first class seats on this plane could be more like the seats found in PE cabins on international planes (ie, more like the seats in the link). Ie, it was a question about the nature of the F seats, not about a PE cabin.

As to cabins, the plane will presumably have the same Premium Class subsection that other Alaska planes now have or are soon getting, but that's technically not a separate cabin:

Premium Class Discussion

Tracer_SEA

Will be interesting to see if AS talks publicly about the pilot training they'll be doing for the MAX, after today's very sad incident involving a second brand new MAX airplane...

LWkitty

I was wondering that as well. This has got to have some impact on the timetable for AS to fully incorporate the Max-8s, I'd think.

fly18725

bmvaughn

Didn't Alaska switch all of those orders to Max-9s?

LWkitty

Good catch. You are correct, they did.

milypan

To be clear, I think AS is in a much better place now than they were then (in terms of safety culture). The more disturbing part of the 261 episode, however, was not that AS was cutting corners right and left at all levels (which it was). It's that this should have been obvious to the FAA, and they just turned a blind eye to it. I'm not so convinced that part has fundamentally changed.

As for Boeing, they're going to rate 57 (per month) on the MAX. That's more than double the production of all their other commercial aircraft models combined. They depend on that cash flow, so the only way they will consider a long stoppage or redesign of the aircraft is if they literally think there's a risk that this safety issue could bankrupt the entire company. I doubt it's at that point yet.

NWAlaskaFlyer

How many new orders are they likely to get for Max 8 between now and the official reporting for these incidents? Could this effect other Max product? Lots of uncertainty on a very big ticket item. This is going to hurt.

milypan

Getting back on topic, AS currently has 32 MAX9s on order. Conveniently they also have 30 A320neos that, according to Wikipedia, were "transferred from Virgin America, but may be cancelled." So I suspect they're in a pretty good place regardless of what happens to the MAX, unless they have some big expansion plans that they've been playing close to the vest. Conveniently that would also allow them to maintain the "Proudly All-Boeing/Airbus/Embraer/Bombardier" fleet that AAG currently sports.

icelandman2

That's very true. From discussions I've had, I'm not convinced that they're planning to expand big, at least not unless a golden opportunity presents itself. Instead, I'd imagine that we'd see continued organic growth for the next 5-10 years. AS current orders seem to reflect that as well. They have some ability to sell orders to other carriers too, right?

dayone

Moderator Note: This thread is an ongoing discussion of AS' addition of MAX aircraft. General comments about the recent MAX crash and MAX safety have been and will be deleted. Those comments may be posted on other FT threads discussing those topics.

dayone, AS Moderator.

jsguyrus

Since Airbus owns a large share of Bombardier and Boeing is soon to own a large share of Embraer, we can just say "Proudly all Boeing (and Airbus)". As they say, 100% of the time you will fly on a Boeing 50% of the time!

channa

Hey, that's my signature!