After the troubled Boeing MAX 737 was grounded around the world, airlines are beginning to demand compensation from the manufacturer as revenue losses are expected to mount.
European low-cost airline Norwegian Air, which has eighteen 737 Max 8 planes in its fleet, has become the first airline to publicly demand that Boeing pay for lost flight time.
The majority of Norwegian’s 737 MAX aircraft serve intra-European routes. The airline has ordered more than 100 of the 737 Max 8 planes.
India’s SpiceJet, also said it will seek compensation from Boeing and demand credit on maintenance, repair, and overhaul for its 12 grounded 737 MAX aircraft. The airline had an aggressive expansion plan that banked on the delivery of Max jets.
The airline, which had 193 MAX 737 aircraft on order, planned to add 15 of them already this year. SpiceJet has also been forced to cut flights on at least 12 international routes.
Indian Civil Aviation had around 40 flights from Thursday.
“This is costing millions of dollars per day,” Phil Seymour, who runs an aviation consultancy called IBA, told US National Public Radio.
Analyst at Morningstar Chris Higgins added that “Typically, once an airline takes the aircraft, Boeing makes some guarantees in terms of the performance of that aircraft, and one of them is that the aircraft should be airworthy.”
In 2013, Boeing paid an undisclosed amount to airlines affected by a three-month grounding of its 787 Dreamliner jets after some of the planes’ batteries caught fire.
The company said the cost of that grounding was “minimal.” However, only 50 Dreamliners were in service at that time compared with more than 350 of the 737 MAX planes of different configurations that have already been delivered to airlines around the world.