How the Bizarre Economics of Airplanes Raises the Stakes of the Boeing Fallout
Strange things can happen when a business is based on millions of people flying around in $100 million metal boxes that can take a year to build.
On Wednesday, the U.S. government ordered the grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max airplanes, following similar mandates in the preceding days by dozens of countries after a crash of one such plane in Ethiopia. The hundreds of 737 Max planes previously in service worldwide are all currently grounded.
In many other industries, when a product has a flaw, companies can rely on a range of workarounds, such as other suppliers who can rise to fill the need, or other products that can be subbed in quickly. But because of the airline industry’s peculiarities—from the importance of airlines’ in-advance flight-traffic projections to the extraordinary cost of a single plane—this temporary
