With the safety of the 737 MAX in the spotlight in the past few weeks, and it's subsequent grounding, questions are circuiting about the future if this aircraft. The 737 is the most popular commercial aircraft type ever produced, so the failure of one
of its variants would have a huge effect on the worldwide airline industry, and would drastically shake up the market and the forms of competition in the narrow body aircraft market, some of the effects of which I will try and outline here.
Rise of the A320neo
Realistically it cannot be argued that there is any other competition to the 737 program apart from the A320 family currently. Therefore with the collapse of the 737 MAX program, the only real alternative that airlines could look to would the A320neo. Whilst
I am sure that this would only be temporary, due to reasons I will outline bellow, in the next few years the A320neo would have a huge rise. This would lead to large profits on this aircraft which would almost certainly have its production rate increased to
match demand. This would almost certainly therefore lead to the 320neo being the world's most dominant aircraft for most of the foreseeable future.
New Narrow Body Aircraft
With Boeing loosing their Narrow body project, their immediate focus would turn to producing a new aircraft to replace this gap in their portfolio. This would be a clean sheet design, which could potentially mix up the narrow body market completely, being an
opportunity for Boeing to create an aircraft which could revolutionise the market and last them for the next 50 years like the 737 has. However I don't think it will be just Boeing who will attempt to create a new narrow body. I would predict that one of the
Chinese manufacturers would also try and take some of this market. With China perhaps being the country to show the 737 MAX the most doubt, having been the first country to ground it. Furthermore with the remaining possibility of a trade war between the USA and China, it may be beneficial for the Chinese to create a new narrow body aircraft.
Larger Aircraft on Short Haul Routes
Currently in Europe the vast majority of short haul routes are operated exclusively by Narrow Body Aircraft. However if the 737 MAX were to go out of production, there would not be as many narrow body aircraft to go around. To make up for this deficit, I think that more airlines would schedule larger aircraft like the 777 and A330 on short haul routes in order to maintain their current levels of capacity. This already is a common sight in Asian markets, and would also be something I would be a fan of seeing in Europe. Furthermore Boeing's new middle of the market airliner, the 797, would also probably be greatly popular, filling in where the 737 MAX may have come in. I believe that whatever happens due to the 737 MAX situation however, the 797 will greatly benefit, as long as Boeing can get it to be functionally perfect and having no safety issues unlike their two most recent introductions.
Flying Becomes More Expensive
However what I believe the biggest consequence of the 737 MAX stopping production would be that flying would greatly increase in cost. Cost comes from supply and demand, and with the loss of supply of the most popular aircraft in the world, there would be a great increase in cost. This would be passed mainly onto fliers. However another way cost would increase would be a lack of competition as this new introduction would make it greatly more expensive for new start ups to join the market, and would also mean that airlines that mainly lease their fleets would have a great increase in cost which would probably lead to them either cutting back on their operations, or going out of business completely.
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