Second, it will hurt sales. No airline wants to buy a plane they can’t fly, but they also don’t want to buy more old planes that use more fuel. My bet is that companies like Southwest will half all orders and see what happens.
Finally, it’ll drive companies that straddle the Boeing airbus decide deeper into Airbus’ arms.
It's worse than that for Boeing. The Comac C919 is now flying. This is China's answer to the 737 Max. Three prototypes are flying now. Volume production in 2021. 800 orders already.
The problem with Southwest is that their entire fleet is 737s. So the 737MAX was a big thing for them: they could stick with that same crappy old airframe, but get better fuel economy, and not have to retrain pilots. They don't want to switch to Airbus because that means they can't standardize on a single model and manufacturer, and they'd have to retrain so many pilots too.
1. These kinds of contracts don't come with provisions for compensation for every foreseeable contingency.
2. You can sue anyone for anything in America. But it's going to cost you.
3. You can also make future purchases conditional on how these contingencies were handled in the past.
So, it's likely that a lot of negotiation between Southwest and Boeing will happen. Possibly even some arbitration. If the two firms ever end up in court over this, that would indicate a colossal failure in all the processes that lead up to that moment. (As litigation is incredibly expensive.)
It's a crappy old airframe because it's designed specifically to be low down to accommodate airstairs, meaning it won't fit modern large engines. It's anachronistic design and has to make tradeoffs in order to stay relevant (even before the MAX, the NG had those weird squished engine nacelles).
The crazy workarounds are maybe bad designs, but an airframe design that's still in demand after 50 years and been built 10,000+ times isn't a crappy design.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone familiar with aviation agree that the 737 is a poorly designed airframe...
It's only in demand because of inertia. This is like claiming that Windows is great for no other reason than because so many people use it, or that the US government is a great idea just because it hasn't collapsed yet.
If you think it's so great, then why don't you explain why you can't put today's large high-bypass turbofan engines on it in the normal position without them hitting the runway? How exactly is that a "great design"? It may have been a great design in 1967, but it isn't now, just like a 1967 Mustang chassis may have been OK then, but is totally inadequate now.
No, I think you are. The 737's airframe includes landing gear designed for using ladders instead of jetways, and wings that are thus too low to the ground, which is why they placed the new nacelles the way they did, causing this problem in the first place.
Second, it will hurt sales. No airline wants to buy a plane they can’t fly, but they also don’t want to buy more old planes that use more fuel. My bet is that companies like Southwest will half all orders and see what happens.
Finally, it’ll drive companies that straddle the Boeing airbus decide deeper into Airbus’ arms.