Thread by @WIRED

On Wednesday, the FAA grounded the Boeing 737 MAX 8, the airplane involved in a deadly crash on Sunday in Ethiopia and another in Indonesia five months ago.

This shouldn’t massively disrupt flight schedules. Here’s why: wired.trib.al/zPasxDg 1/

Unlike what happens when there’s a freak snowstorm or computer outage, most US airlines should have time to reach out to customers scheduled to fly on the Boeing 737 MAX in the coming days and weeks. 2/

The 737 MAX jets started shipping in May 2017, so only 387 exist worldwide, and each aircraft typically runs three or four flights per day. Sure, that might *sound* like a lot, but American Airlines alone operates almost 1,000 passenger jets. wired.trib.al/zPasxDg 3/

Southwest, which has the world’s largest MAX fleet with 34 planes, says they account for less than 5 percent of its over 4,000 daily flights. Other airline operators are even less reliant on the craft: American Airlines has 24, and Air Canada has 23. wired.trib.al/zPasxDg 4/

Airlines tend to prepare for even the most random disruptions in air service, but even so, there will be some schedule-shifting at the airlines affected by the 737 MAX grounding. wired.trib.al/zPasxDg 5/

Airlines also have to think about maintenance. US aircraft get cursory inspections every five days or so, but airlines don’t have maintenance bases at every airport—so operators need to get their aircraft to the airports equipped to inspect their model. wired.trib.al/zPasxDg 6/

As airlines deal with this service blip, an international team of investigators is in Ethiopia, collecting and analyzing data on what happened aboard that Boeing 737 Max 8. In the meantime, the rest of the fleet will wait. wired.trib.al/zPasxDg 7/