Originally Posted by
Max Tow
Agree, but there may well be a further complication if even a small proportion of the travelling public can't or won't distinguish between the 737 Max and the thousands of others without the particular model suffix. Very difficult to predict or quantify but it's difficult to believe that there won't be some collateral damage to the 737 brand. I imagine the
PR and Commercial departments of "old" model 737s will be giving this some thought and will be looking for any signs of avoidance.
Judging by the near riot on TUI's Facebook and Twitter accounts with their 1000's of their customers demanding TUI ground the MAX, or book them on another type, I reckon this was some way towards the CAA biting the bullet and making the case for the UK to ground the MAX sooner than later.
I think we can give some credence to TUI's customers that they can be well informed as to what aircraft they were going on their holidays with.
I think Jet2 will be sitting there thinking phew! - We don't have this mess to deal with...
Had Monarch survived and had their 737 MAX fleet in operations then this would have been a major blow for them.
Titan will be uber busy...
The S19 package holiday season is around a month away starting up, and whilst I reckon TUI UK can juggle their existing fleet around to cover their 6 MAX groundings (TUI UK have a 7th due to come) the TUI Group in the EU maybe not so easy to cover.
TUI UK have leased a load of 737-800's to Sunwing (who in Canada have had to ground their own MAX fleet) - I doubt TUI will be able to get those 738's back easily - TUI may get recently stored 757's RTS and keep the 767's longer?
Combine with the loss of Small Planet and Germania there are a lot of holiday flights to cover this coming season.