Boeing customer Air Lease says 'damaged' MAX brand should be dropped

DUBLIN - The executive chairman of aircraft leasing firm Air Lease AL.N , which has 150 of Boeing's BA.N grounded 737 MAX jet on order, on Monday called on the U.S. manufacturer to drop the "damaged" MAX brand to avoid it undermining the plane's value.

"We've asked Boeing to get rid of that word MAX. I think that word MAX should go down in the history books as a bad name for an aircraft," Steven Udvar-Hazy told the Airline Economics aviation finance conference in Dublin. "The MAX brand is damaged and there is really no reason for it."

He said it was not yet clear if customers would quickly forget about the two fatal MAX accidents that caused the grounding "or are there going to be parts of the world where people are going to be more superstitious and it will take longer for them to erase that stigma", he said.

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Alex Richardson) ((conor.humphries@thomsonreuters.com; +35315001518; Reuters Messaging: conor.humphries.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))