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Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

That and switching costs. I'm no expert but I've noticed airlines tend to keep their fleets to as few variants of plane as possible. Makes sense thinking about maintenance etc. Have to imagine introducing an entire new manufacturer would add significant complication.

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Emirates with the B777 and A380 models only. Landing in Dubai and seeing that uniform line of B777's was something else.

I remember the first time I came face to face with 777. When you show up to the gate expecting a 737, that 777 is incredible sitting there instead. Normally, you are pretty much looking down at the 737 from the gate, but you’re underneath the 777 and can’t even see the cockpit. It was really surprising since this was not a long haul flight.

I was and still am impressed by the size of the engines of those things. Last time I flew one I was looking down on one thinking it looked more like a small house than a jet tube.

(see https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/x7jges/777_engine...)

reddit comments can be fun:

"If I was a billionaire, I would buy a 737 and upgrade the engines to GE9X's "

Boeing refers to that as 737MAX+

The 777 is a great aircraft. Pilots love them. Maybe the last one Boeing built.

Sucks to fly on though, compared to the A350/A380/787, all of which are noticeably more comfortable.

any airline can turn any plane into a hell for the customers with how they squeeze as many seats in as nearly impossible to do

Maybe. In my experience over the last few years of doing a lot of long haul flying in economy, there's not much difference in seat layout between airlines though, it's mostly about the plane you're on. A380s have nice big seats, the rest are pretty similar. The pressurisation and quality of air conditioning on the other hand makes a big difference to my quality of life personally, and that's noticeably worse on 777s.

Airbus has a significant edge there because they have very uniform FBW cockpits and a very good cross-crew qualification program: it takes two weeks to train from an A320 rating to an A380 (it's by far the longuest CCQ).

Maintenance is probably an even bigger issue than crew.

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