The “preventable incident” endangered scores of lives both on the plane itself and others flying Max 9 aircraft, the suit alleges.
Three passengers are suing Boeing and Alaska Airlines for $1 billion in damages in the wake of a door panel blowing out midair on their flight.
The suit, announced Feb. 23, accuses Boeing and Alaska Airlines of negligence for allegedly having ignored warning signs that could have prevented the Jan. 5 incident, which forced the plane pilots to make an emergency landing.
“This experience jeopardized the lives of the 174 passengers and six crew members that were on board,” a release announcing the suit states. “For those reasons, the lawsuit seeks substantial punitive damages … for what was a preventable incident.”
There are only two commercial airplane producers at scale. If there was any competition in this market Boeing would have bankrupt by now.
Aeroplanes aren’t like loaves of bread where you can just buy another one tomorrow if you don’t like this one today.
You have to plan, order, buy, support and maintain, and one presumes a lot of money is lost if you change half way. Besides the efficiency of buying from the same company (and better still, the same model) you already have planes from.
So there’s a lot of inertia for competition to pull a customer from.
You lose a lot more money when your MAX crashes or when it’s grounded for two years.
I’d hope so… do you think it’s really true?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings
The groundings are true - but does it really cost companies more than changing suppliers?
Imagine paying for a car, and then not being allowed to drive it for two years.
Imagine you have a whole department dedicated to managing your fleet of cars and getting them serviced at the same dealer, then you switch brand loyalty so you buy a new fleet and contract a new garage.
it’s bad. but not as bad as the plane sitting in the airport for two years.