For over a year and a half, approaching two years, Boeing’s 737 MAX has been grounded by virtually all government aviation agencies in the world. After two deadly crashes in the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019, agencies like the FAA were left no choice but to ground the aircraft and investigate the crashes. Recently, the long-awaited return of the airliner was announced by American Airlines, which began to schedule flights for the aircraft on December 29th, 2020, with a route from Miami to New York. Following the announcement, other airlines including United and Southwest released plans to reintegrate the MAX back into their fleets sometime in the first quarter of 2021. But US carriers aren’t the only ones with plans to reintroduce the MAX, Canada based airlines WestJet and AirCanada also released a strategy to bring the MAX back into service. This news will undoubtedly give many major airlines some room to breath as they struggle to break even during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, airlines that had ordered the MAX saw significant drops in revenue due to the fact that many of their airplanes were forced to remain grounded. That effect only compounded after the first wave of coronavirus swept the world in late 2019 and early 2020. In combination, these events proved disastrous for airlines like United, who relied heavily on the stimulus efforts of the US government to avoid having to furlough many of their senior captains. On top of that, United has accrued a large sum of debt that it is having trouble paying off- and this situation is only putting airlines in a tighter and tighter pinch. Furthermore, the ongoing struggle to keep US case numbers within a manageable margin has led to a massive drop in the number of Americans who are traveling, especially via plane. This has caused significant damage to the airline industry as a whole, which was already struggling to make ends meet after the MAX was grounded in March of 2019. However, despite the grim state of the pandemic, airlines can hopefully look forward to this new year with a sense of cautious optimism because the MAX comes with better fuel economy, a smaller carbon footprint, and more revenue. Let us hope that those can do enough to keep our airlines in business long enough to be here when the pandemic is under control.
