The US plane manufacturer Boeing has begun flying 737 Max jets that were refused by Chinese airline customers back to the United States, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies escalates.

Bloomberg reported earlier this week that China had instructed airlines to stop taking delivery of Boeing jets.

  • fox2263
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    32 months ago

    If they’re going cheap I’ll take one

    • albert180
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      62 months ago

      I guess they will have to roll with their Comac C919 in order to please Party Officials.

      Also Airbus doesn’t have the capacity to deliver new planes quickly right now

    • albert180
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      32 months ago

      Well I assume the other airlines will inspect the Airplane rigorously when they know someone else already refused delivery for it, because they don’t want a shitty lemon

    • @[email protected]
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      322 months ago

      Airlines usually customize the engines, avionics, galley, toilets, cabin interior, seat configuration, in-flight entertainment, etc.

      Just because they’re bringing the aircraft back, doesn’t mean they get to ship them out to other waiting customers ASAP.

      • @[email protected]
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        182 months ago

        It’s not usually Boeing that does the interior btw, and is usually done after delivery by a third party.

      • Skunk
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        72 months ago

        It’s called option, not customization.

        You can’t put a huge ass spoiler on your 737 to have it stick better to the ground, and it will go back down anyway.

        • TheRealKuni
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          152 months ago

          You can’t put a huge ass spoiler on your 737 to have it stick better to the ground

          Just to “um akshually” a bit because I found this fascinating when I learned about it ages ago.

          A spoiler on a car doesn’t help it stick to the ground better. Rather it “spoils” air, reducing drag and allowing air to flow around the car better. Like damming up the air between the roof and the spoiler, allowing other air to just flow from the roof to the spoiler. This means there isn’t a vacuum created behind the cabin, so you have less turbulent air and less drag.

          A wing on a car increases drag, and forces the car down to the ground by creating lift (though since the wing is upside down compared to a plane, we call this lift “downforce”).

          We often use the terms “spoiler” and “wing” interchangeably when referring to cars, but they’re very different beasts!

  • @[email protected]
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    702 months ago

    Aren’t these the planes that were grounded due the multiple crashes?

    That might be a reason why they don’t want them.

    • Skunk
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      392 months ago

      It is, but that’s not the reason here (even if not buying a 60 years airframe with shit avionics and too low ground clearance is a valid reason).

      Most Asian orders are for bigger aircrafts, so 777 and 787 for Boeing.

      And even without tariffs retaliation from China, Boeing is fucked because of tariffs. An aircraft is 90% imported parts from all over the world. Airbus is the same, but Airbus is not in the US (well, they have an A320 line there for US market but they can close it and keep working with the rest of the world from Europe, Boeing can’t do that)

    • @[email protected]
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      132 months ago

      It’s a trade action. They want them, and need them. Airbus and Boeing are the main, by far, manufacturers of medium and large passenger jets, and they are back ordered until the 2030’s. But Boeing jets are some of the most expensive per unit US items you can use as bargaining chips.

    • Hildegarde
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      182 months ago

      If that were the issue they would have canceled the orders several years ago. Refusing the planes at this point is due to more recent developments.

    • TheRealKuni
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      202 months ago

      They fixed the MCAS issue a while back. It now requires data from multiple sensors, is only able to activate once per flight, and has a dramatically reduced strength on that one activation.

      Mentour Pilot did great videos about the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines incidents that go into detail about that system and its flaws.

      • @[email protected]
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        452 months ago

        It’s not about fixing that one defect.

        It’s about the degradation of their safety culture and engineering rigor to the point that they were just blithely ignoring regulatory requirements that are written in blood. Management overrode TONS of engineers, assemblers, and QC techs in the interest of shipping shit and making money. This also happened in the 787. This also happened in the starliner capsule. I’m sure it’s happening elsewhere. Boeing can no longer be trusted to reliably and safely build things - it’s that bad.

  • @[email protected]
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    112 months ago

    Alright Boeing, we know you have assassins for killing people in the way of your profits, where are they at?

  • @[email protected]
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    162 months ago

    The fall of boeing is all in all a good thing for the US. These too big to fail companies are a severe liability.

    • @[email protected]
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      112 months ago

      Who says they’re going to fail?

      The machine to have taxpayers eat the cost of those planes is already grinding away. They probably won’t be used, likely sit somewhere and decay, but we’ll pay for them.

      The whole point of too big to fail is you get bailed out when you start to.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        They wont because they will get enough welfare to be propped up until they screw up and start to fail again.