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Boeing Has Started Working on a 737 MAX Replacement (msn.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
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 Started Working on a 737 MAX Replacement More | Reply

Boeing Has Started Working on a 737 MAX Replacement

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  • What will they call it? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The New and Improved 737 ULTRA!

    • 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])

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The 737 50-50

  • 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

    • 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.
      • He is right about 787 Dreamliner though. 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. Perhaps they could have reduced some of the composite use for cheaper maintenance, as its not really needed anymore to achieve the range.

        • 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.

          • The 787 has a different wing profile and swoop. It also has different cockpit layout. 50% of the fuselage is composite (as opposed to Duralumnin on Aluminum frame. It also has a different pressurization for increased comfort (lower altitude equivalent). The 787 is successful and wildly different than the 737. For those that dont know, each plane number (717,727,737,747,757,767,777,787) refers to the generation or platform, The 787 was Boeing's last complete start-from-scratch platform design. The 787 introd

      • 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.

        • I have flown on them, and they at least as horrible, but the key thing is that they are cheaper to operate. The airline business has tight profit margins, and older aircraft designs are much more expensive to operate. The Embraer are much smaller than any of the Douglas aircraft. They are perfect for shorter routes with smaller passenger loads. The real question is why no US company could design a model for that market.
          • Because Boeing kept wanting to push the 737.

            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

            • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      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

      • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      18 months from paper to flying prototype for the 747. Almost 20 years for the 787. Something's very wrong.

      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

      • 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

  • 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]

    • If you want Boeing to acquire concepts, the Starship's Earth-to-Earth system qualifies. /sarcasm
  • 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
    • 2032 is more reasonable, given their most recent brand new plane (that was really advanced and cost $30 billion) took 5 years. That was the 787

    • 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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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

    • 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)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday September 30, 2025 @11:40AM (#65692982) Homepage

    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.

    • My neighbor used to work for Boeing. She said the MBAs would always hate how the engineers would laugh at them when they had some notion that was idiotic. The problem, though was also when they decided to build different parts of the same aircraft in geographically diverse locations, and the changes at each location to correct for unanticipated design problems mean that integrating the parts into an aircraft happens in a less than ideal manner.

      • How does Airbus manage to build its sub-assemblies in geographically diverse locations, and then integrate those sub-assemblies on multiple FALs around the world? Airbus seems to have great success doing that - their only issues recently was with the A380, and that was due to a CATIA software issue at the design stage, rather than the actual manufacturing stage...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      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.

  • 1) "don't crash"
    2) TBA

  • Does Boeing have any aircraft engineers left? I thought they were all replaced with financial engineers and supply chain managers.

  • 737 is designed for roll up stairs. Thatâ(TM)s how old it is and why it is so low slung. This is also why the 737 maxes have crashed: lots of mitigation and design choices to accommodate an ancient platform. Hopefully they are starting from the ground up instead of variations on a very tired theme.
  • a. MCAS was designed specifically for the 737 MAX to address handling differences caused by the larger, repositioned LEAP-1B engines, which resulted in a nose-up pitching tendency at high angles of attack.

    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 manual trim on a 737 takes forever, that trim wheel takes something like 100-200 turns from one end to the other. Do you mean manually running the electric trim?

    • c. MCAS had overriding authority over the power trim system, preventing pilots from manually resetting the trim wheel without disabling power assist, which made manual trimming more difficult.

      This was likely the worst mistake in the changes from the old STS to the new MCAS.

      The pilot memory items on stabilizer trim runaway with STS was to turn off both the automated trim and the manual trim buttons on the yoke, this training was retained for MCAS. The logic was that if there is a stabilizer trim runaway then that could be from either an autopilot malfunction or a stuck switch on the yoke, so to address both potential causes the training dictated shutting off both. When MCAS was introduced the s

  • Boeing has been doing various paper design exercises for close to a decade on their New Midsize Aircraft (NMA), which has been tentatively called the 797. A number of airlines have expressed interest for much of that decade. The MAX issues redirected Boeing's teams, and pushed back the work on the NMA. But Boeing never, totally, abandoned the work, but instead then decided to wait for new engine developments that would provide a strong compelling operational advantage for a NMA. The first serious step o
    • It's tragic that the prior management regime spent too much effort on the MAX expansion of 737 and started so late on the 757 replacement NMA project, it was 2015 when the concept was first explored, but MAX fiasco and WuhanCoronaVirus era torpedoed the program. I'd certainly hope the company didn't lose the bits of work done a decade ago, but it'll take a lot to spin up the program again, have to get the best aerospace design engineers moved over, and hire a lot of staff engineers to implement the design.

  • the 737 HBO ?

    (another possibility is the 737 Oscar, or 737 Lando, if they can get a sponsorship deal with McLaren)

  • 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.

  • Hopefully engineers this time around, not retarded MBAs (and excuse the pleonasm.)

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