This would mitigate 14 179-seaters, or the loss of 2,506 seats, with a gain of 19 126-seaters, or a gain of 2,394 seats. Not horrible. One plane short.

Not really.

Two reasons. One, it's not 14 planes that UA would need to replace, it's 30 -- according to the fleet site, they were expecting 16 additional MAX deliveries in 2019. Two, it takes months of prep work for a used plane to be refurbished and put into service for UA. By the time these 73Gs are flying in UA livery, either the 737 MAX will be flying alongside them, or some other contingency plan will have been put into place, because this will have done little but stem the bleeding..

I suspect this is simply UA doing what UA does: buy used planes. They've got quite the collection -- 319s, 320s, and 73Gs.

As jsloan noted, I think this is unrelated. UA has an issue with a cap in its large RJ fleet, and has avoided adding the A220 or another small mainline jet. Yet, UA needs badly more small main line lift, hence adding A319s when UA can find them... This is likely part of that effort. And I might add that it will likely be a while until the planes are configured and ready to go. My guess is that the MAX will be flying again before these enter service with UA.

+1. Things go full circle. UA is now buying last gen and used planes, Delta is buying new and next gen (A220, A321neo, A359) planes... A lot of these decisions are based upon opportunity, the deals they are offered, and often more short term needs.

New York Times:
"The Boeing 737 Max Crisis Is a Leadership Failure"
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/opinion/boeing-737-max.html

Thanks for sharing; that articles has some real zingers in it. My favorite:

But this disturbing culture of denial persists today at Boeing, as shown by the revelations following the crashes of two 737 Max 8 aircraft in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed 346 people. The company has an institutional reluctance to even examine potential design flaws in its product.

Apparently the A321neo has issues with it's pitch control computer as well:

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...ch-ano-459718/

That sounds awfully familiar.

The part about issues with excessive pitch causing issues, sounds vaguely familiar (the issue is the limits of safe maneuvering, not a computer that w/o warning puts you into a dive), the Manufacturer modifying the manual to explain the limits and issue, sounds to me to be the opposite of what Boeing did....:rolleyes:

And what about type certification and training for qualification on the 321Neo? Does Airbus give pilots an iPad lesson to shift from the 321, or even the 319/320 and start flying the Neo? Or is a different approach taken on this aircraft?

For me (perhaps because of my professional bias as an educator) the training failures of the MAX program are as big a part of the problem/risk as the technology failings.

100% agree. The design of the A/C was bad, but the lack of training and information provided to the pilots, particularly after the first crash, was inexcusable.

I suppose the big difference in this case is that Airbus has been proactive and alerted customers to the potential for this condition to exist rather than trying to sweep it under the rug and letting two aircraft crash in the process.

Whilst this is an issue no doubt, it is not a catastrophic one as has been the case with the 737MAX. With that said, I'm sure time will tell as the A320neo series is arguably a more important aircraft for Airbus than the 737MAX is for Boeing.

"the Manufacturer modifying the manual to explain the limits and issue" That is what Boeing did? Not until after the first (Lion Air) crash, when it sent out the following:

http://www.avioesemusicas.com/wp-con...Due-to-AOA.pdf

That looks like literally the same reaction as Airbus, unless I'm missing something. Is there evidence that Boeing knew specifically about the fatal flaw in the MCAS software prior to the Lion Air crash?

It's likely that the only reason that Airbus even identified the A321neo issue is because of increased scrutiny around pitch augmentation systems following the MAX crashes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49026285

Boeing is taking a $4.9bn hit to cover costs related to the worldwide grounding of its 737 Max aircraft.

The charge is set to wipe out profits when the world's biggest planemaker posts quarterly results next week.

I

For mega companies, it's always and increasingly about money. If a $5B charge is true, this might be enough to wake the company up.

Maybe.