[sushibowl]

Depends on how big the airline is, what percentage of its fleet consists of max 8s, etc.

Generally, planes like this have high operating costs, and usually are kept in the air pretty much constantly to be able to make a profit. Having one grounded potentially means losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.

[organsnyder]

Surely airlines purchase insurance to hedge against this sort of thing?

[moate]

IANAL, but I would not want to deal with the headache of underwriting whatever plan you're thinking about. Who would they be buying this insurance from? What specifically could it be protecting against?

Seems much more likely that they'd need to seek restitution against the producer of the planes through civil court channels. "You sold me a faulty plane/didn't explain what your product did well enough and now you need to refund my money" but on a multi-million dollar scale.

[organsnyder]

Insurance for loss-of-use is quite common (edit: in other industries—no idea for aviation), though it's normally (AFAIK) for natural disasters and other random occurrences. I wonder how the purchasing contracts between Boeing and the carriers are structured—perhaps they have a warranty that would do something similar.