Boeing Has Started Working on a 737 MAX Replacement (msn.com) 72
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.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't snorting how you usually consume coke?
Re: (Score:2)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Good News, but Missed Opportunity (Score:3)
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 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.
But, since morons run Boeing, they did everything wrong.
18 months from paper to flying prototype for the 747. Almost 20 years for the 787. Something's very wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Boeing should have piggy backed on that redesign to make a narrow body, shorter range, version so it could fly into smaller regional airports, and operate with less crew.
Are you advocating that instead of Boeing making a replacement for the 757 and 767, they should have focused their efforts to make a plane that that the exact same role as the 737? That's a false dichotomy argument.
Still, would have been a nice restart, rather than trying to keep the 737 alive for far longer than it should have just to keep pilots certified.
Again, a false dichotomy. Boeing retired the 757 in 2004 and the 767 is only being ordered as freighters. Boeing needed to replace them. Yes they should have tried to solve the 737 problem earlier but that does not mean they didn't need the 787.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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:3)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Because this is what their customers, the people that pay $100-200M for a plane, want and have asked for: fewer types.
Common type-ratings are insanely important to airliners. It allows them to shuffle flight crews around when needed without solving an NP-hard type matching problem (well, airline scheduling is still NP, but fewer constraints is for sure better). Even flight attendants have to be type-rated since they are a
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: Good News, but Missed Opportunity (Score:2)
757 never had a problem with high bypass engines. It was designed from beginning to use high bypass engines unlike the 737.
Re: (Score:2)
I am not talking about their physical size, i am talking about their thrust rating. The 757 uses the exact same engines - interchangeable even - as the 767, a widebody aircraft, making it way overpowered.
Re: (Score:3)
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)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Airbus is also waiting for the new engines that are in development. They won't hit the market until 2035 at the earliest. Without these engines there's really not a lot they can do with a refresh.
Both companies are stuck in a waiting game. Airbus is ahead because of the 350 and the 320neo. Boeing's only hope currently is to accelerate the MAX line, and add a few a shorter MAX.
Re: (Score:2)
And my point still stands.
When the next generation of engines become available, Airbus could choose to do a refresh of the A320 family at a fraction of the cost of a brand new aircraft.
Airbus can choose to do that because theres still a massive amount of development potential in the A320, whereas Boeing has run to the end of the 737 - even if there was still technical room in the 737, the public wont accept it any more.
Boeings only hope is Airbus choosing to do a clean sheet for the A320 replacement.
Re: (Score:2)
Engines falling off aren't really acceptable these days.
Re: (Score:3)
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 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.
But, since morons run Boeing, they did everything wrong.
18 months from paper to flying prototype for the 747. Almost 20 years for the 787. Something's very wrong.
2 is pretty much what Airbus have done. Put as much commonality between models as they can, of course you can't simply "scale up" a A320 to an A350 because they're different aircraft with different characteristics but you can make the interfaces and procedures similar so that re-training is easier and faster. I'd be surprised if Boeing hasn't done something similar in the past.
A very, very long lead time for new aircraft designs is a normal thing. They aren't as simple as they were in the 60s and safety
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]
Re:Just acquire the Overture (Score:4, Funny)
Don't wait for it.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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:1)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Airbus builds different parts of the aircraft in different locations too: https://simpleflying.com/airbu... [simpleflying.com]
Scroll down a bit and there is a nice map.
That's not the issue, Airbus does it just fine. The issue is poor engineering and process management at Boeing.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
>Though we really should call it the McDonnell Douglas management team, since there is truth to the whole "McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing using Boeing's own money".
This. This is the root of Boeing's woes. Awesome quote there. Gotta remember that one :-)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It may be too late for them to turn things around now. By the time they do the competition from China is going to have ramped up. Boeing removed one of the barriers to Chinese manufacturers - the perceived reliability and safety of Western brands.
I guess we're back to step 1? (Score:2)
1) "don't crash"
2) TBA
Does Boeing have aircraft engineers? (Score:3)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Didn't see it in the wikipedia, but IIRC there was a delay of 8 (maybe 3) seconds after a pilot used the trim thumbswitch on the yoke before MCAS would resume trying to kill everyone. So there was a path out of MCAS deathwish: keep tapping the trim switch on the yoke in intervals less than the delay, or use the thumbswitch to power the trim into desired position then turn the stab switches off. Neither procedure was documented, as that would
The NMA (aka 797) has had a long gestation period (Score:2)
Re: (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.
Driven by whom? (Score:2)
Hopefully a complete break from 737 (Score:2)
This is why Boeing killed people: trying to sweeten the sales proposition by eliminating the expense of recertification for a new airframe. Instead, by flimflammery, they tried to pretend that the Max has precisely the same aerodynamic characteristics as earlier 737s without the big high-bypass engines duct taped onto an ancient airframe that simply can't fit them in any safe way. Costly mistake both in lives and dollars. High time to put that creaky old design out to pasture and redraw from a clean sheet.
Call it the 757 SUPERMAX (Score:2)
for when whoever designs the next flight augmentation feature with no redundancy finally does time in jail when the design kills people, unlike what happened with the MAX.
737 MAX Mini? (Score:2)
In the spirit of selling less for more money, they could call the new version the MAX Mini.