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Comment by panick21_ | Hacker News Reader

The actual problem is production. Airlines don't want to buy the MAX. The issue is is, if you want to order 100 A320s or 100 A220, you are gone wait a long, long time.

So you have two options, no planes, or the 737 MAX. Those are their options.

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Boeing 737 Max backlog [1] is almost as big as Airbus’s [2]. If you are going to order a hundred planes you’re going to be waiting a long time regardless. Orders have been outpacing deliveries for years.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_order...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320neo_famil...

If you already have a position in the the queue for 737 then giving that up to switch would be a huge issue.

Since the MAX initial problems the A320/A220 have been growing far more orders is pulling ahead of the 737 by quite a bit.

I've heard that the problem is that airplanes are roughly commodotized, as in they can't compete on features, only price.

And to compete on price, supply chains become more specialized and more fragile and efficient, or software is added to reduce pilot training fees.

I thought the whole reason for the MAX was that Airbus released a plane that featured better engines and performance.

Better engines and lighter materials were about fuel, a serious operating costs that goes into calculating the profit of a route when presuming maximally cheap consumers, AFA I understood.

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