Regardless of safety considerations (which, to be clear, are incredibly important), I think the 737 is simply the wrong plane for the future AS fleet, especially ex-SFO/LAX. The current 2-2 seating simultaneously consumes a lot of cabin space and looks pathetic compared to the hard product on most AS TCON competitors. AS simply is not competitive there, and they acknowledge as much when they talk about focusing on the “leisure enthusiast.”

They should go fully asymmetric, or at least retain this option. Don’t try to compete in the true F market, but instead offer a “good enough” product at a considerably lower price point. In practice what that could mean would be a fleet of A223, A225, and A321neo. The A22x would have 2-2 seating up front, and the A321 would have 2-3. This would give a cost structure in which a “F” seat was only 40-48% more expensive than a Y seat. How they might wish to price it is a separate question, but suffice to say they could both dramatically undercut their competitors on price and still retain a large number of seats available for elite upgrades. Is it a worse hard product than the competition? Of course, but that’s already true today in many cases!

Of course, in the real world they have a lot of institutional experience with the 737 and they’re based in SEA, so pretty much zero chance that this ever happens.

I was hinting at considering Northern Europe and Japan.

The list of viable destinations expands considerably with the A321XLR economics.

It’s a major strategic question as to whether AS wants to play the intercontinental game. But that aircraft makes it possible. Same consideration as 20 years ago when AS did not fly east of PHX. Twin engine Narrowbody aircraft weren’t capable of transcons (other than the 757). Then the NG series came out after the A320s and AS had an aircraft that fit its fleet planning with transcon capabilities. And that platform with the extended range for a narrowbody has provided the majority of Alaska’s growth in the last 20 years. Hawaii and transcons.

The A321XLR does the same thing for the 4500nm range. If AS doesn’t try to grow there where does the growth come from?

(I realize this isn’t MAX specific but there are multiple reasons to consider alternatives, namely the strategic opportunities presented)

“This is the logic that lead to lax oversight and allowed an unsafe plane to kill all those people.”

Wow, apparently you have deeper insight into the FAA/international regulators’ conclusions than anyone else. If you think the MAX will simply go away because of this, you’re deluding yourself. If you believe Boeing has deeply flawed institutional design/oversight issues, I guess you’re not flying much at all (737/787/777/747). All the armchair safety experts in the blogosphere just add to the clutter of (mis)information.

Keeping and expanding the A321neo fleet Including XLRs is a good complement to the 737 fleet, As AS continues to grow its network, it will have a wide variety of stage lengths and load/yield combinations to deal with. I think it will out-grow its current model of one aircraft type fleet. The A321neo fleet can help them serve new destinations or add seat capacity to existing high-volume route, when it makes financial sense for them to do.