In reaction to the two recent crashes of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, a number of countries and airlines have stopped flying this plane while the latest incident is investigated.
I imagine this would put enormous stress on the rest of the fleets of these airlines. Aircraft are expensive, it's hard to see how they could have enough spares of comparable aircraft that they can find substitutes for all of these flights.
Do airlines generally have contingency plans for something like this? Or are there likely to be lots of flight cancellations as a result?
The FAA hasn't taken this action (yet) (UPDATE: on 3/13 Trump issued such an order). Apparently this jet is not yet a major component of US fleets. CNN says that of 548 that have been ordered by US airlines only 65 have been delivered so far, and if they were grounded it wouldn't cause major disruption.
But I suspect there would be a bigger impact in some smaller countries.
Will this make a noticeable impact to air travellers because airlines won't have enough planes to cover their routes?
BTW, I was unsure whether to post this on Travel or Aviation SE. Moderators, feel free to migrate it if you think it's more appropriate on Aviation.
UPDATE:
This week Southwest Airlines announced that they're cancelling about 3% of their flights, and American Airlines is cancelling about 1.5%.