Start with the airlines. Pressure on carriers to cut costs made the fuel-efficient max Boeing’s fastest-selling model ever. Around 5,000 have been ordered since its launch in 2011 and nearly 390 delivered. Southwest, an American carrier with 34 such planes, has cancelled thousands of flights. In July it revealed a $175m hit to pretax profits in the second quarter. American Airlines, which has scrapped 115 or so flights a day, reckons that full-year profits will be $350m lower as a result. OAG, an airline- data firm, estimates that, globally, the grounding will cost airlines $4bn in sales by November. Many airline bosses would agree with Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, Europe’s second-biggest carrier with 135 maxes on order, who has told Boeing to “get their shit together”.

Some airlines have put the plane back in their schedules for November, on the assumption that once Boeing submits fixes to the faulty software in September, America’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its counterparts in other countries will allow a return to service before the end of the year. This looks optimistic. Even if regulators approved the new software, it would take six to eight weeks to get planes out of storage and in the air. And as Jose Caiado of Credit Suisse, a bank, points out, it is unclear if pilots require retraining in flight simulators, adding more delays. Southwest, which aims to get the max in the air by January, seems to admit as much.

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