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United 777-200 fleet faces an uncertain future after Dulles engine failure

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98 points makaimc | 2 comments | 15 Dec 25 19:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.403s | source
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markus_zhang ◴[15 Dec 25 20:17 UTC] No.46279955[source]▶
All 777-200 are less than 30 years old (June 1995 first commercial deployment according to Wikipedia). Considering we are still flying older aircraft such as MD (but as a cargo plane), can United find a buyer for this fleet?
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rob74 ◴[15 Dec 25 20:54 UTC] No.46280488[source]▶
"We" are (currently) not flying the MDs you are referring to, and it's questionable if they will ever fly again. And paradoxically the worst hit are not the airlines flying the MD-11, but the cash-strapped firefighting companies who only relatively recently switched to the (now also grounded) DC-10 from much older planes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c61ALDSN-ws&t=335s).
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1. markus_zhang ◴[15 Dec 25 21:02 UTC] No.46280596[source]▶
I agree that we are not currently flying MD-11, but that's just because of the November tragedy. I don't think they are going to retire it if not because of it. That is, they retire it out of scare of more tragedy, not because of older age.
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2. brigade ◴[15 Dec 25 21:25 UTC] No.46280912[source]▶
MD-11s aren't in commercial passenger service, so it's unlikely they retire it due to a poor reputation.

The huge question is what changes the FAA requires to unground it; if they decide design changes are needed to reduce the risk that an uncontained failure of engine 1 or 3 directly takes out engine 2, that could likely be economically infeasible.