Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
Am I the only one who thinks a safety feature shouldn't be optional? Or is it far more complex than that?
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Like Ducay said, it sounds sketchy, but it doesn't matter if you're talking about Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, Embraer, or any of the car manufacturers.
If a certain feature is not required by law and isn't critical, the manufacturer can and will make it optional if they can make a buck off of it, especially if all it takes is a software setting to disable an extra display reading. It's not just Boeing, any aircraft manufacturer will do this.
And perhaps even worse, airlines, or low cost carriers in particular, want the airplanes to come as cheap as possible, because they don't have the deep pockets that the big airlines do.
If a low cost carrier can save $100,000 per plane by leaving a couple of optional features on the table, that's $5 million on an order of 50 aircraft, which could mean money to spend on something else, or a lease payment on plane #51. It's a slippery slope, for sure.