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Easy solution here is for every traveler to refuse to buy seats on a Boeing plane. If we honestly believe the company was at fault and has been negligent in the

Easy solution here is for every traveler to refuse to buy seats on a Boeing plane. If we honestly believe the company was at fault and has been negligent in their safety protocols, it seems like an easy answer to just not support their business.

r00fus 3y ago
Asking the consumer to help dethrone a government supported monopoly is a sick joke.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  I'm not sure if Boeing would be considered a monopoly, Airbus also has a large market share. Why shouldn't consumers step in to avoid traveling if they don't consider it safe? If it is safe enough to travel, we can all stop talking about Boeing and the news can let the story die.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    What a bold statement to make out loud, all at once.
  - mynameisnoone 3y ago
    In addition to making big flying things that don't seem to be as good as they were before the MD camel-fucking merger, Boeing is also a strategic defense contractor making the company TBTF. Hell, the Obama DOJ ran press interference countermanding the NTSB over the Jamacian AA331 737NG crash and Obama said he was "[the Boeing] salesman-in-chief".
xp84 3y ago
I think you may have mistyped “Hypothetical” as “Easy.” Given Boeing made about what, 60% of the full size jets domestically, and their only competitor is backlogged for a decade or so, for people to comply with that plan would also require that about 60% of air travel just be cancelled for the next 5-10 years. Which, coincidentally, would actually bankrupt all the airlines that we’d be asking at the same time to replace 50-100% of their working airplanes with very expensive new ones. In summary, this isn’t something we can really seriously attempt. Btw i say this as someone very disappointed in Boeing, not as a defender of their bad decisions.
- jvans 3y ago
  And Boeing of course knows this, and this is exactly why they're so brazenly ignoring NTSB requests.
- ssivark 3y ago
  The FAA grounding all planes Boeing planes (of this model) would be a more practical path to the same, executed through proxy collective action.
  - xp84 3y ago
    I'm not sure I understand how that is meaningfully different from the scenario I played out though. There are a ton of 737 MAXes. Just grounding them all indefinitely? Iif they're just fundamentally unsound by design then there's no amount of reinspection that would fix that, so that does mean junking them all, with no replacements available for a decade, so the airlines are then left without the planes they need to operate their routes, meaning most domestic airlines just go bankrupt. I guess while the government is at it, they could mandate that Boeing refund all their money for those planes, which might save the airlines from bankruptcy, at the cost of Boeing itself going out of business, which thanks to being too big to fail (Nobody seriously would want Airbus to have a global monopoly on planes) would end up best-case as a GM situation where the government takes over ownership for a while. Still, for the next couple decades, air travel would just be much more expensive due to scarcity of available seats on most routes. There are basically zero good outcomes possible here, not with your plan, nor any other, to be honest.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  It's only hypothetical if people are willing to fly on Boeing planes anyway. The current level of air travel isn't necessary, neither are airlines. Sure the industry would be trashed, but if that's because passengers lost faith in both Boeing and airlines willing to keep them in the air then there really isn't anyone else to blame. Why should we assume that air travel can't be meaningfully reduced and that passengers can't possibly decide to drive or stay closer to home?
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
jvans 3y ago
I would settle for major booking sites to provide a clear filter for Airbus. Not everyone will use it but it'll go a long way for those of us that do care
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Easy solution here is for every traveler to refuse to buy seats on a Boeing plane Most travellers don’t care about this. (I’m a frequent traveller and have aerospace engineering and pilot training. I barely care about it from the perspective of a flier.) The leverage is with the regulators and airlines. Calling your elected is orders of magnitudes more meaningful than complaining to the gate agent or silently re-booking. (And from what I’ve heard, barely anyone is calling.)
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Given Boeing's market share the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking. Elected officials will do almost nothing here. Any government led solution will take years and be heavily managed to ensure the stability of the airline industry, meaning the government will do very little as any meaningful change will cause economic and political damage.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking Zero marginal effect. > Elected officials will do almost nothing here When did you last speak to your elected? I had senior staffers from a few Senators in my house the other week. This came up. The number of calls logged on the issue was minimal. If there had been interest, something—like expanded NTSB powers—would have gone into the funding bill. That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. If someone can’t bother to call, they won’ canvas or back a primary challenger. (They may not even vote.) That makes them safe to ignore. If someone is persistent, or more meaningfully, able to organise, that gets attention. This is a worn drum for me because I regularly see bursts of brilliance on HN epitaphed with a political nihilism that guarantees its ignorance.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      > Zero marginal effect. I'm not sure how customers deciding to stay home rather than fly on a Boeing plane would have zero marginal effect. That would leave something like half of the current flights empty. > That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. I agree with you here completely. My point is that there is an easy solution, if anyone actually cares. We get these news cycles of topics that people seem to get wound up about in the moment when they actually don't care at all. Where we disagree here is that elected officials couldn't fix this if they wanted to. At best they could ground all Max's for a period of time, but that won't fix the company. The government can't afford to lose Boeing, even for a period of a few years while the company gets it's shit together. Boeing has too much of an impact on both the airline industry and the military for the government to have any real room to deal with the problem.

r00fus 3y ago

Asking the consumer to help dethrone a government supported monopoly is a sick joke.

_heimdall 3y ago
I'm not sure if Boeing would be considered a monopoly, Airbus also has a large market share. Why shouldn't consumers step in to avoid traveling if they don't consider it safe? If it is safe enough to travel, we can all stop talking about Boeing and the news can let the story die.
- sitkack 3y ago
  What a bold statement to make out loud, all at once.
- mynameisnoone 3y ago
  In addition to making big flying things that don't seem to be as good as they were before the MD camel-fucking merger, Boeing is also a strategic defense contractor making the company TBTF. Hell, the Obama DOJ ran press interference countermanding the NTSB over the Jamacian AA331 737NG crash and Obama said he was "[the Boeing] salesman-in-chief".

xp84 3y ago

I think you may have mistyped “Hypothetical” as “Easy.” Given Boeing made about what, 60% of the full size jets domestically, and their only competitor is backlogged for a decade or so, for people to comply with that plan would also require that about 60% of air travel just be cancelled for the next 5-10 years. Which, coincidentally, would actually bankrupt all the airlines that we’d be asking at the same time to replace 50-100% of their working airplanes with very expensive new ones. In summary, this isn’t something we can really seriously attempt. Btw i say this as someone very disappointed in Boeing, not as a defender of their bad decisions.

jvans 3y ago
And Boeing of course knows this, and this is exactly why they're so brazenly ignoring NTSB requests.
ssivark 3y ago
The FAA grounding all planes Boeing planes (of this model) would be a more practical path to the same, executed through proxy collective action.
- xp84 3y ago
  I'm not sure I understand how that is meaningfully different from the scenario I played out though. There are a ton of 737 MAXes. Just grounding them all indefinitely? Iif they're just fundamentally unsound by design then there's no amount of reinspection that would fix that, so that does mean junking them all, with no replacements available for a decade, so the airlines are then left without the planes they need to operate their routes, meaning most domestic airlines just go bankrupt. I guess while the government is at it, they could mandate that Boeing refund all their money for those planes, which might save the airlines from bankruptcy, at the cost of Boeing itself going out of business, which thanks to being too big to fail (Nobody seriously would want Airbus to have a global monopoly on planes) would end up best-case as a GM situation where the government takes over ownership for a while. Still, for the next couple decades, air travel would just be much more expensive due to scarcity of available seats on most routes. There are basically zero good outcomes possible here, not with your plan, nor any other, to be honest.
_heimdall 3y ago
It's only hypothetical if people are willing to fly on Boeing planes anyway. The current level of air travel isn't necessary, neither are airlines. Sure the industry would be trashed, but if that's because passengers lost faith in both Boeing and airlines willing to keep them in the air then there really isn't anyone else to blame. Why should we assume that air travel can't be meaningfully reduced and that passengers can't possibly decide to drive or stay closer to home?
KennyBlanken 3y ago

jvans 3y ago

I would settle for major booking sites to provide a clear filter for Airbus. Not everyone will use it but it'll go a long way for those of us that do care

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Easy solution here is for every traveler to refuse to buy seats on a Boeing plane Most travellers don’t care about this. (I’m a frequent traveller and have aerospace engineering and pilot training. I barely care about it from the perspective of a flier.) The leverage is with the regulators and airlines. Calling your elected is orders of magnitudes more meaningful than complaining to the gate agent or silently re-booking. (And from what I’ve heard, barely anyone is calling.)

_heimdall 3y ago
Given Boeing's market share the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking. Elected officials will do almost nothing here. Any government led solution will take years and be heavily managed to ensure the stability of the airline industry, meaning the government will do very little as any meaningful change will cause economic and political damage.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking Zero marginal effect. > Elected officials will do almost nothing here When did you last speak to your elected? I had senior staffers from a few Senators in my house the other week. This came up. The number of calls logged on the issue was minimal. If there had been interest, something—like expanded NTSB powers—would have gone into the funding bill. That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. If someone can’t bother to call, they won’ canvas or back a primary challenger. (They may not even vote.) That makes them safe to ignore. If someone is persistent, or more meaningfully, able to organise, that gets attention. This is a worn drum for me because I regularly see bursts of brilliance on HN epitaphed with a political nihilism that guarantees its ignorance.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    > Zero marginal effect. I'm not sure how customers deciding to stay home rather than fly on a Boeing plane would have zero marginal effect. That would leave something like half of the current flights empty. > That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. I agree with you here completely. My point is that there is an easy solution, if anyone actually cares. We get these news cycles of topics that people seem to get wound up about in the moment when they actually don't care at all. Where we disagree here is that elected officials couldn't fix this if they wanted to. At best they could ground all Max's for a period of time, but that won't fix the company. The government can't afford to lose Boeing, even for a period of a few years while the company gets it's shit together. Boeing has too much of an impact on both the airline industry and the military for the government to have any real room to deal with the problem.