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Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The FAA grounding all planes Boeing planes (of this model) would be a more practical path to the same, executed through proxy collective action.

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.

"too big to fail" strikes again.

It's almost like we shouldn't have allowed things to get to the point where the world's passenger jet liners are only built by two companies. The M-D merger never should have been allowed.

This is the real learning here, but this truth can't be talked about. Boeing is a symptom, not a cause.

100% agree, though I don't know why we couldn't talk about it.

Boeing is a massive corporation with both public and private contracts, employing a huge number of almost entirely well meaning employees. The government has allowed too many carve outs and exceptions as the company grew and now have no choice but to stay mostly quiet while the cracks in the company leadership and potentially culture put not only passengers and the airline industry at risk, but the very military we may need to be at full fighting force if Russia, China, Iran and co, etc decide to escalate.

And Boeing of course knows this, and this is exactly why they're so brazenly ignoring NTSB requests.

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?

I'm specifically referring to consumers here though, not oversight or regulation.

Consumers wouldn't be asking airlines to replace planes, they would simply be saying they're unwilling to fly on the planes airlines are offering.

Consumers don't have a concept of "too big to fail" - that's a government concern. We individually decide what we want to spend our money on, its as simple as that. If people were actually concerned with Boeing they'd stop flying on Boeing planes.

Ah, I see what you mean.

> If people were actually concerned

Yeah, and tbh I think (and am glad) we aren't at that level of concern, yet. I really hope we don't get there. I can think of several ways we could get there, though. I really frigging hope that a lot of reinspections and triple-quadruple-checking of things avoids any further disasters that cost lives.

> 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

You are saying this as if it was a bad thing.

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