Ahh xetroV – common sense.
Unfortunately that don’t always work in a transfer.
It could simply be someone in the new airline tasked with ensuring fleet compatibility is achieved during the delivery check – remember some purchasers / lessees don’t see the plane until the last minute and even when they do see the plane it’s often a “small” team – I’ve dealt with acceptance teams as small as two and a high as twenty.
It could also be a “reduction finding exercise” where the airline asks LOTS of questions – finds a few “non compatibilities” and then the bean counters start saying “well we’d like the plane – but it’s not really compatible with our others – tell you what reduce the price / lease rental cost and we’ll take it” – here you have to remember the discussion will be between “marketing and finance” neither will fully understand what their talking about – except that it’s money.
I once had a new airline advise the lease company they couldn’t take the plane “due to the many changes we would have to do in the interior” – after LOTS of discussion it boiled down to changing head rest covers – to close the issue I did a deal whereby “we” did half they did half – so I simply removed every head rest cover personally.
BUT – that wasn’t the reason for the discussion – the reason was the plane was going to be ready too early for the new Lessee and the contract said “Lessee will take plane when it’s ready” (terms simplified) – so they threw this one and a few others at management and made them sound a big deal – slowed everything down and hence accepted the plane a few days later – saving themselves days lease rental.
As to this particular scenario if it’s not as the purchaser wants he’ll try and get the seller to be the one that pays the Boeing Maintenance Centre for the change – rather than pay for it himself