Just got cheap last-minute flights on a United 737-Max-9. The next cheapest flight was $3500 for a family of 4; this one was $1400. Sometimes it pays to risk your life on airplanes other people won't fly on.<p>If you figure 200 people on the plane (it wasn't full) and they each paid $500 less than market rates, that's $100K that they lost on one flight alone.
I wonder what Airbus is doing to increase their production capacity. They're basically leaving a <i>lot</i> of money on the table by not being able to fill orders faster. If they could somehow double their capacity overnight, they'd still immediately sell all those planes. Of course, building production capacity for complex aircraft isn't trivial at all, but I never read about this in the news media, only about Boeing's problems and the problems their customers are experiencing because they're Boeing customers.
So poor management at Boeing leads to poor products. Products used by airlines. Products found to be defective. Defective products grounded or recalled.<p>Seems Boeing management needs to be sued to oblivion. Have Boeing executives force a sale of their collective stock, and that will cover United losses.
In a general sense, if a company sells another company a product, should the responsibility for the safety of the product rest with the manufacturer, the operator, or somewhere in between?