Boeing Has Started Working on a 737 MAX Replacement (msn.com) 45
An anonymous reader shares a report: Boeing is planning a new single-aisle airplane that would succeed the 737 MAX, according to people familiar with the matter, a long-term bid to recover business lost to rival Airbus during its series of safety and quality problems. Earlier this year, Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg met with officials from Rolls-Royce in the U.K., two of the people said, where they discussed a new engine for the aircraft. Ortberg appointed a new senior product chief in Boeing's commercial plane business, whose prior role was developing a new type of aircraft.
Boeing has also been designing the flight deck of a new narrow-body aircraft, according to a person familiar with the plans. This new aircraft is in early-stage development and plans are still taking shape, some of the people said. Boeing's plans represent a shift for the company, which had put some new aircraft development work on the back burner while it navigated multiple challenges. They are also a sign that the company is betting that a cutting-edge plane design could power its business for the next few decades.
Boeing has also been designing the flight deck of a new narrow-body aircraft, according to a person familiar with the plans. This new aircraft is in early-stage development and plans are still taking shape, some of the people said. Boeing's plans represent a shift for the company, which had put some new aircraft development work on the back burner while it navigated multiple challenges. They are also a sign that the company is betting that a cutting-edge plane design could power its business for the next few decades.
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You'll never get me on a Boeing plane.
My guess is you never travel anyway so your comment is meaningless. Its hard to do any sort of traveling without flying on a Boeing for some leg of the trip. They are incredibly safe planes, regardless of the press, statistically, still, today, the safest way to travel is by flying, Boeing included......
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I don't fly often, but when I do it is with an airline which uses Airbus machines almost exclusively. The other airline I have flown with recently uses something from Embraer, useful when there's a short runway at one end of the journey.
What will they call it? (Score:2, Funny)
The New and Improved 737 ULTRA!
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The New and Improved 737 ULTRA!
Well... it was originally just "737", then "737 MAX", so guessing "MAX", then the next version will be "737 MAX" (again) *... :-)
(*following other trends [wikipedia.org])
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Good News, but Missed Opportunity (Score:2)
New-gen little twin is great news for them..
But, they've wasted two opportunities:
1. They got the DC9 Super 95 (or MD-95) when they bought Douglas. They sold it for a bit as the 717. This is a five-abreast plane, smaller than a 737. This would have been *ideal* for small fields like Charlotte and for short hops, like it was designed for. But nooooo, to "save" the 737 they canned this one. That let Bombardier eat that market alive.
2. When they were designing the 787 they shoud've done the same trick t
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A short, thin version of this plane with 100 fewer passengers and half the range would have been an ideal go-to for airlines in the regional markets.
A "thin" version of a 787 means redesigning the whole plan which would mean it is no longer a 787. Boeing already had that plane: it is called the 737.
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You clearly never flew on an MD-95. They were the most uncomfortable and clunkiest aircraft in the sky; a primary reason why McDonald-Douglas was for sale.
No 95s, but plenty of 80s (MD80, 83, 88) on American.
All you said is true, except this plane wasn't Douglas' demise, it was the DC10 that did them in.
And while it's short (floor-to-ceiling) and narrow, it's still leagues above your typical CRJ or Embraer glorified business jet cum airliner.
The DC9 / MD Whatever / Boeing 717 had more headroom and legroom than any of these alleged "regional" jets.
You clearly never have flown in a Fokker 100 or a CRJ-Anything or an ATR or anything like that.
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When Bombardier designed the CSeries (now the Airbus A220 series) Boeing filed lawsuits over it it and said that the 737 competed with the CS100 even though the Cseries had far fewer seats and was much easier to achieve a better cost per passenger mile on routes which could not support enough people to nearly fill or fill the smallest 737 model.
"Why innovate when you can litigate?" in essence.
Bombardier ended up giving a majority to Airbus because they coul
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Pure hubris on Boeing's part when they could have designed a 717 successor...
I just hit on a thought: Boeing has kinda overlooked the short-haul market. I mean yeah, they had the 727, and the OG 737 was for that too, but all of that used the same fuselage and flight deck as a 707.
Meanwhile, Douglas used the original concept for the DC8 (5 abreast) and made it into the DC9. The DC8 got expanded to 6 abreast to get a deal from Juan Trippe of Pan Am (25 sold.) At the same time, in the same Christmas party, Trippe cajoled Boeing into expanding the then 5-abreast into 6, and bought 2
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Mmhmm. Prior to the McDonnell-Douglas takeover, Boeing seemed to have generally been on a track of continuous development/redevelopment, working on new designs and working on revamps of their existing designs for subsequent revs even as in-development revs were approaching final approval.
Looking at the history of McDonnell-Douglas, they basically relied on the legacies of the DC-9 (1965) and DC-10 (1971) until even after the Boeing merger. The DC-9/MD-80 series/MD-90 Series/Boeing-717 and the DC-10/MD-11
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I tend to disagree somewhat.
By the McDD merger, Boeing was on its third iteration of the 737, with no new design on the horizon at all, and its fourth iteration of the 747...
Boeing was no stranger to wringing every last drop out of existing designs.
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And that is the reason 757 hasn't been manufactured for a long time anymore. It has too large and too heavy engines hence it is not that fuel efficient. The too heavy engineering make everything else too heavy as well.
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2. When they were designing the 787 they shoud've done the same trick they did with the 757 / 767 - one central section, one flight deck, same engines on both. Fly one, you can fly the other. This would've avoided the pains of growing old the 737 is showing.
That would have created more problems than solve anything. The original reason for the 737 MAX problems was they had to use newer, larger but more efficient engines however to fit them they had to move the engines forward causing the lift problem. The 737 MAX uses CN-LEAP 1B (95 inches) while the 787 uses GE Genx (111 inches) or Trent 1000 (112 inches). Making the 787 use less efficient and less powerful engines only hurts the 787 and the 737 MAX could not have installed much larger engines.
18 months from paper to flying prototype for the 747. Almost 20 years for the 787. Something's very wrong.
What are you tal
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20 years? Nope. It was about 8 years from first designs until certification. This is the same for Airbus, and has been the average development time for new aircraft for some time. The Airbus/Bombardier C series planes were about the same lengh of time. Aircraft take longer to certify now than they did in the 60s. Part of that is due to stricter regulations, certification in multiple countries, and
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Boeing is considering a new plane because Airbus is considering a new plane.
If Airbus decide to refresh the A320 family again (and they can, theres plenty of development room left in it - it hasnt had a new wing since the 1980s for example), then Boeing will be in a bad spot.
The problem Boeing has is that most of the efficiency gains come from the engines, so if Airbus can chuck a new engine under the A320s wing for a fraction of the price and timeline of a whole new aircraft design, Boeing is stuck. They
Just acquire the Overture (Score:2)
If Boeing is looking for something more innovative than their existing designs, they should consider acquiring Boom Technology to obtain their Overture [wikipedia.org] supersonic plane, and then scale the production of it to reduce costs and improve revenue passenger miles. There's already an order backlog for the Overture as well.
Here's a video of the final XB-1 demonstrator test flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Don't wait for it.... (Score:2)
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Given Boeing's present day bureaucratic notions of efficiency (defense contractor syndrome), we should see a new plane to replace the 737 sometime around 2040
That would be perfectly normal for an aircraft manufacturer. Airbus started the A3XX project in 1990 and unveiled the first A380 in 2005. The A350 was marginally faster taking only 12 years to market. Actually Boeing historically was exceptionally fast compared to competitors at delivering new planes.
They already have one (Score:2)
It's called a 757.
Only reason they favoured the 737 is that the airlines wouldn't have to recertify their existing pool of 737 pilots.
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It's called a 757. Only reason they favoured the 737 is that the airlines wouldn't have to recertify their existing pool of 737 pilots.
And that was an important goal of one of their larger 737 customers, Southwest (also Ryanair). The flexibility of any pilot being able to fly any aircraft in the fleet has been important to these airlines. And while each of those airlines have flirted with various Airbus aircraft (to attempt to drive down the price(s) of their future 737s), in the end, they have stayed the course.
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The 757 got a new lease on life when it was certified for ETOPS. But they're old and, by modern standards, inefficient.
I'm sure the Boeing folks have considered a 757neo (sorry for the Airbus terminology there) or a 757Max, but they appear to have opted for a clean-sheet 797 instead.
...laura
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It's nothing of the sort. The 757 is a significantly larger and higher capacity aircraft than even the 737-MAX10, and it also presents the exact same problem as the 737 - the wings are too low to accommodate high bypass engines.
Mangaement is the problem, not the current model (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire Boeing problem started when they decided to value MBAs more than Masters in Engineering. They moved their headquarters away from the factories and put profits above quality. But in aircraft, quality = safety = business reputation.
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That's why the current CEO moved his family to Seattle and is encouraging the rest of the Boeing management team to move back as well. And apparently has tapped many of the ex-engineering team leaders for advice. (He came on during the strike, and while you can blame him for prolonging it, you could say he was taking the advice of the previous leader - because in general coming in and mucking things up is the best way to ruin things, than to come in and see how things work first before you change anything.
I guess we're back to step 1? (Score:2)
1) "don't crash"
2) TBA
Does Boeing have aircraft engineers? (Score:2)
Does Boeing have any aircraft engineers left? I thought they were all replaced with financial engineers and supply chain managers.
Will they build on a novel platform? (Score:2)
Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (Score:1)
b. MCAS was originally triggered by data from only one angle-of-attack (AoA) sensor at a time, even though there were two sensors on the aircraft. This single sensor reliance was partly to avoid triggering recertification requirements.
c. MCAS had overriding authority over the power trim system, preve
The NMA (aka 797) has had a long gestation period (Score:2)
Are they going to call it (Score:2)
the 737 HBO ?
(another possibility is the 737 Oscar, or 737 Lando, if they can get a sponsorship deal with McLaren)
Do they have the engineers for that? (Score:2)
Because available evidence strongly suggests Boeing cannot design a new plane in this class anymore. They likely waited a fed decades too long and engineering skills of this type vanish from an organization if unused for too long.