No, they need a different landing gear to make room for bigger engines. Larger diameter engines are needed for better fuel efficiency. Fly by wire is nice, but fuel economy is more important.
It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009, and its design was fraught with problems. Before then was the 777 in the early 90s (pre-McDonnell takeover), and the 757/767 in the early 80s.
There's a phenomena that ofter occurs with large organizations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets. The former group has no work to do, after all, so why should the company keep them around? But then if the market ecosystem shifts, and a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company.
Steve Jobs spoke eloquently about this phenomena in an old interview:
One of the reasons the 787 was fraught with problems is because it was peak decision-making by finance and accounting people. Specifically, Boeing outsourced everything for the 787s. There were layers of subcontractors upon subcontractors to produce the different parts because, you know, outsourcing was "cheaper" or "more efficient". So of course the logistics pipeline is hellishly complicated.
All because Boeing just didn't want to employ people directly who can build up expertise.
The 787’s problems were mostly in its supply chain and product-market fit. The actual plane experienced fairly normal growing pains for a clean-sheet design, and has been an exceptional machine since then.
What problems were there with the 787? IIRC it was the first major composite airliner and they had the advantage of hoovering up all the unemployed post Berlin Wall cream of the crop Soviet aerodynamicists to work on it for them.
Well, if I was CEO of Boeing, first day I'd basically be Microsoft and move heaven and earth getting the Dave Cutler of aviation (I have no idea who that is). He's in charge and if you don't like it you come to me.
Second problem are the MBA's. I don't have a solution for that, other than keep them far away from Cutler's division.
Honestly, the technical part is "easy"; it's the day to day politics that gets in the way when what is needed is longterm thinking. Take for example when NYC hired Andy Byford and Cuomo The Child couldn't stand not being in the spotlight. Shame.
It's interesting how that infects every aspect of a company.
I used to work tech support for a mid sized company selling some specialized networking eqipment, late 1990s and early 2000s. Our big deal was we answered the phone immediately, and we were good at what we did, we solved problems, resolved the issue right then and there on the phone.
Customers paid through the nose for our support contracts because it was worth it and they were happy. Happy customers were actually happy customers.
Company grew and was acquired and acquired other companies and so on.
By the end of my time there happy customers was a metric. It really didn't reflect actually happy customers, it was an amalgam of arbitrary stats. We could hit or surpass those numbers, nothing really mattered. Nobody was more happy if the numbers went up, or more sad if the numbers went down. Someone closed a ticket, did it solve anything?, who knows, but it was one more ticket closed!
Management who knew how to build a team, support people who cared, including myself, all just moved on.
you're trying hard to paint a picture of fail, but your evidence doesn't stack up
>It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009
2003 to 2009 is an incredibly short time line for a revolutionary new design (the heavy use of composites) The A350 developed in response was much less ambitious effort and took longer. The A380 also took a long time to plan and execute. Aircraft generations last at least a decade, and new designs every 15 years-ish is not a crazy ballpark
>and its design was fraught with problems
A380 had plenty of problems, hence the delays
the problems with the 737MAX stemmed from Boeing trying to push the low-wing design of the older 737 through one more generation to avoid a complete redesign, to avoid the kind of cash flow pinch and never-paid-back development that Airbus suffered with the A380 (which was why they tried the "evolutionary" redesign on the cheap that led to the A350)
>Before then was the 777 in the early 90s
777 was a revolutionary approach to developing a plane that led to its incredible success which continues through today (the clever idea they had? asking airlines what they wanted) Airbus has also chosen paths that have been quite successful, their "same cockpit" being one of them. 777 and Airbus's planes from that time all had very long commercial lives
>everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets
I don't think anybody has ever designed a jetliner end to end, as piston planes crossed that hurdle earlier.
>if ... a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company
where else are aerospace engineers going to work? I'm not saying there's a surplus but with defense, aviation is a very big industry, and most any engineer would like to work on greenfield designs for marquis products.
shoot from the hip copycat Jobs would find no jobs in aerospace. Different types of people have different personalities. Aircraft design is tight tolerance and exacting, and anybody who does it is going to be comfortable working in a that type of environment, lots of check, test, recheck, paperwork, etc.
Smart companies should know that a large chunk of their value chain is knowledge work. For airplanes the danger of suddenly seeing a Boink 212 appearing on the market is probably quite low, but there certainly is engineering work to be done on planes, even if some of it won't see implementation for a long time.
But long time strategy is probably not even a term in some companies.
But is there room for innovation in the airliner industry anymore? Let's have a thought experiment
If you use the same engines from the same vendors, same aluminum, same carbon fiber, same landing gear. Almost everything just like the others, can you really differentiate anymore? Or if you are a component vendor, can you really innovate that much anymore?
Ie maybe it can be argued it is the correct move, from the board's and investors' point of view. The machine is already pretty close to optimal, and has been since the nineties. Don't change the machine, just milk it. Fire most engineers, move production to the lowest cost non-unionised place, outsource as much as possible to vendors that you compete viciously against each other etc.
> It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009, and its design was fraught with problems.
I've listened to a fair number of podcasts about this, and consensus seemed to be they need to start designing a new airplane now, because if they wait as long as they'd previously been indicating, they'd have lost too much of their "new airplane design" experience.
A big advantage for this kind of project today is the fact that the entire plane can be modeled in CAD with every single part verified to fit and work. The US Air Force claims this was heavily used for the B-21 and greatly accelerated development.
This will be Boeings answer to the Bombardier C Series, aka the Airbus A220 series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220 , which is one of the nicest planes for short haul in service at the moment.
Edit: indeed, not the 'Neo', I got the name wrong but the link right.
The timing may be right. The A220 is suffering from lousy engines from their supplier. Lots of engine turnover, lots of maintenance needed. Delta just made a huge commit to the A220 made in Mobile to replace their 717 fleet.
I hope they design and build the airframe properly this time. A plane that needs [cheaply outsourced] software (that relies on one sensor) to correct bad behavior at the flight envelope is just not acceptable.
I still refuse to fly on the 737 MAX. I know it’s probably fine given what pilots now know about the how to control the thing, but I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence or any carrier that enables it.
There are few companies on earth I’m as mad at as Boeing. As I see it, they are not done repenting for their crimes.
China recently started building and delivering airplanes. It will be interesting to see if Boeing can actually compete with what is coming out of China over the next few years: https://www.voanews.com/a/7528331.html
In the short-term, I imagine USA-based airlines will not be allowed to buy any airplanes from China: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-comac-military-...
And perhaps they would not even be allowed to fly in our airspace. But if China decides that it wants to build planes at lower prices than Boeing (or Airbus), then I imagine they will. Their marketshare would grow elsewhere in the globe, reducing Boeing's sales. Can Boeing deal with that? Would the USA borrow China's playbook, and nationalize (or something similar) Boeing to keep it solvent?
COMAC can only compete (geopolical drama aside) if engine efficiency improves or fuel prices decreases. TLDR every bit of COMAC can be modern / tier1 (and most of it is), but at current aviation fuel prices, 10-15% efficiency gap in engines will save more money on fuel over airframe lifetime. C919 is basically a 2025 narrow with a 2015 engine, but that old engine alone makes it not economically viable in most markets AT current aviation fuel prices. COMAC makes a lot of sense for PRC economically, not giving a cent to boeing, can build out COMAC specific support across country easily, but it's still commercially not well priced.
The caveate being COMAC is only expensive / has limited room to discount because it uses a lot of western components (for easy regulation/certification only). If PRC moves to a full soveign civil aviation stack, it would probably be very possible to price COMAC competitively, but that's more a medium/long term project. That's probably how it goes the way things are gonig, US probably not going to even certify/liimt where PRC planes can land to kneecap COMAC. PRC + RU can probably do some shenanigans like prevent US planes from flying over their airspace in retaliation and then it's a matter of how much divertion (extra fuel+travel costs) impact bottom line. At the end of the day geopolitics will determine how viable civil aviation projects are.
China is very good at subsidising development like this. Other commenters are rightly pointing out that they cannot currently compete with Boeing. But if you look at the way the chinese approached car manufacturing, 20 years ago, I wouldnt have even ridden in one, these days they are honestly fantastic. Its because they got the chance to make those really bad cars, that they were able to improve to where they are today. 20 years from now, its possible that the gap closes to the point that Boeing is displaced from everywhere but the US.
Biggest issue I can see is that the US will try and weaponise national security against them. Much like how Cisco and Juniper fought to have Huawei and friends blacklisted in most western countries. Just as they become competitive, Boeing and Airbus might start screaming that the chinese planes have communist killswitches and that planes will fall out of the sky if theres a war with China.
Has there been any sign of change in their corporate culture?
Last I heard they're pushing hard to ramp up production and FAA is back to letting them self-certify stuff. And they're under worse financial pressure now than when they made the last round of questionable decisions.
...I'm all for competition & avoiding a monopoly but colour me unconvinced that the root cause has been fixed.
This has been a long time coming. The big buyer for 737 consistently has been Southwest. Before a recent ownership shakeup, Southwest wanted to only operate the 737 airframe, and avoid as many new features as possible to keep training costs low, and maintenance costs low.
New activist ownership has pushed to diversify frames and phase out reliance on the 737 frame which is significantly more inefficient than modern frames. Boeing doesn't want to make 737s, but they are locked in because of this demand.
Source: Family member trains pilots at Southwest after retiring from a major airline carrier after a career as pilot/check-airman.
People blame Boeing for the 737 MAX. They were elbows deep in a clean sheet design. Yeah, they shouldn’t have built the plane but the demand was made by Southwest and American who both said straight up if you don’t make a new 737, we’re switching to Airbus.
> New activist ownership has pushed to diversify frames and phase out reliance on the 737 frame which is significantly more inefficient than modern frames.
Looks like a case of "broken clock is right twice per day"
Well since the 787 program will very likely never break even, let alone turn in profit, for Boeing, the 737's replacement will be a do or die project for Boeing. They cannot afford another money-losing product.
Is this the New Midsize Airplane, the "797", again? [1] That's been on and off for over a decade. Should have been shipping by now.
The COMAC C919 is finally shipping, although it's not a great aircraft and China still imports the engines. COMAC will probably do better in the next round.
Will Embraeier build something in that size range? They could. They already build small midsize aircraft.[3]
This looks like Boeing missing the market.
And it's all because the Southwest CEO wanted to have only one kind of airplane. That's the cause of the 737 MAX.
Boeing currently has an awkward gap between the 737 and the widebodies that was previously filled by the 757 - the 737 Max 10 (which still isn't certified!) only has about two thirds of the range of the A321XLR, and a slightly lower passenger capacity. Airlines that currently have 757 fleets and who need that range are going for Airbus instead, and Boeing just doesn't have an answer for it. So while, yes, any new Boeing design is likely to be fly by wire and composite and everything, it also seems likely that it's going to try to fit that market.
The 737 Max 7, the smallest of the Max series, is longer than the 737-200, the stretched version of the original design. A brand new design is going to be able to ignore that market (which basically doesn't exist any more, the Max 7 only has a handful of orders) and scale upwards to also be a 757 replacement. But it's also going to have basically no commonality with the 737, so it's going to have to genuinely be better than the Airbus product because existing Boeing customers aren't going to benefit from being able to move existing pilots to it without retraining or benefit from common maintenance plans and so on. It obviously should be better - the A320 program started over 40 years ago, it's not that much newer than the 737 - but given Boeing's myriad series of failures in recent years and how painful the 787 program was, it's not impossible that they'll fuck this up entirely.
The obvious move is to take cues from the 787 program in terms of composites, to cut fuel burn. Adds some creature comforts like larger windows as a side bonus.
Overly nerdy question: I'm curious regarding AoA sensor failure, is there an ability to manually source select the AoA, if not, how about the FMC? This might be called master source select, or which side is controlling (captain or first officer).
This is not a surprise. The timeline for this plane aligns exactly with the timeline for Airbus's a320/321 replacement which aligns exactly with when it is believed the next generation of engines will be ready.
Both Boeing and Airbus are spending a lot of time evaluating the next engine options. Last year there was an article that Airbus is more optimistic about CFM's open rotor designs while Boeing thinks the next generation geared turbofan models will win out. That is entirely based on leaks and no-one actually knows how true those assessments are.
The 737 Max was designed with the expectation that the 8 variant would be the sweet spot. Since that time it is clear that there is massive demand for up-gauging and the A321neo is dominating and there is significant demand for the Max10 variant despite it not being certified yet.
I would expect that both Boeing and Airbus are looking at that size (maybe slightly larger) for their next narrowbody with some flexibility for shrinks and/or stretches.
This is not a response to any existing planes. The A320/321 family is very old (50 years mid 2030) and it is expected that both Boeing and Airbus are going to be introducing new airframes to fit the new engine technology.
63 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 65.0 ms ] threadDoes that mean it's not trying to be "another 737" but actually a truely new type?
There's a phenomena that ofter occurs with large organizations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets. The former group has no work to do, after all, so why should the company keep them around? But then if the market ecosystem shifts, and a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company.
Steve Jobs spoke eloquently about this phenomena in an old interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA
All because Boeing just didn't want to employ people directly who can build up expertise.
All of which are generally regarded as great aircraft by the people who fly them.
That seems very quick to design a whole jumbo jet. I know they're not starting from scratch, but how long does something like that typically take?
The 787’s problems were mostly in its supply chain and product-market fit. The actual plane experienced fairly normal growing pains for a clean-sheet design, and has been an exceptional machine since then.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/business/boeing-s-russian...
Second problem are the MBA's. I don't have a solution for that, other than keep them far away from Cutler's division.
Honestly, the technical part is "easy"; it's the day to day politics that gets in the way when what is needed is longterm thinking. Take for example when NYC hired Andy Byford and Cuomo The Child couldn't stand not being in the spotlight. Shame.
I used to work tech support for a mid sized company selling some specialized networking eqipment, late 1990s and early 2000s. Our big deal was we answered the phone immediately, and we were good at what we did, we solved problems, resolved the issue right then and there on the phone.
Customers paid through the nose for our support contracts because it was worth it and they were happy. Happy customers were actually happy customers.
Company grew and was acquired and acquired other companies and so on.
By the end of my time there happy customers was a metric. It really didn't reflect actually happy customers, it was an amalgam of arbitrary stats. We could hit or surpass those numbers, nothing really mattered. Nobody was more happy if the numbers went up, or more sad if the numbers went down. Someone closed a ticket, did it solve anything?, who knows, but it was one more ticket closed!
Management who knew how to build a team, support people who cared, including myself, all just moved on.
Sad stuff really.
>It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009
2003 to 2009 is an incredibly short time line for a revolutionary new design (the heavy use of composites) The A350 developed in response was much less ambitious effort and took longer. The A380 also took a long time to plan and execute. Aircraft generations last at least a decade, and new designs every 15 years-ish is not a crazy ballpark
>and its design was fraught with problems
A380 had plenty of problems, hence the delays
the problems with the 737MAX stemmed from Boeing trying to push the low-wing design of the older 737 through one more generation to avoid a complete redesign, to avoid the kind of cash flow pinch and never-paid-back development that Airbus suffered with the A380 (which was why they tried the "evolutionary" redesign on the cheap that led to the A350)
>Before then was the 777 in the early 90s
777 was a revolutionary approach to developing a plane that led to its incredible success which continues through today (the clever idea they had? asking airlines what they wanted) Airbus has also chosen paths that have been quite successful, their "same cockpit" being one of them. 777 and Airbus's planes from that time all had very long commercial lives
>everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets
I don't think anybody has ever designed a jetliner end to end, as piston planes crossed that hurdle earlier.
>if ... a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company
where else are aerospace engineers going to work? I'm not saying there's a surplus but with defense, aviation is a very big industry, and most any engineer would like to work on greenfield designs for marquis products.
shoot from the hip copycat Jobs would find no jobs in aerospace. Different types of people have different personalities. Aircraft design is tight tolerance and exacting, and anybody who does it is going to be comfortable working in a that type of environment, lots of check, test, recheck, paperwork, etc.
Smart companies should know that a large chunk of their value chain is knowledge work. For airplanes the danger of suddenly seeing a Boink 212 appearing on the market is probably quite low, but there certainly is engineering work to be done on planes, even if some of it won't see implementation for a long time.
But long time strategy is probably not even a term in some companies.
If you use the same engines from the same vendors, same aluminum, same carbon fiber, same landing gear. Almost everything just like the others, can you really differentiate anymore? Or if you are a component vendor, can you really innovate that much anymore?
Ie maybe it can be argued it is the correct move, from the board's and investors' point of view. The machine is already pretty close to optimal, and has been since the nineties. Don't change the machine, just milk it. Fire most engineers, move production to the lowest cost non-unionised place, outsource as much as possible to vendors that you compete viciously against each other etc.
I've listened to a fair number of podcasts about this, and consensus seemed to be they need to start designing a new airplane now, because if they wait as long as they'd previously been indicating, they'd have lost too much of their "new airplane design" experience.
Edit: indeed, not the 'Neo', I got the name wrong but the link right.
Lets hope Boeing can do it right this time.
I still refuse to fly on the 737 MAX. I know it’s probably fine given what pilots now know about the how to control the thing, but I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence or any carrier that enables it.
There are few companies on earth I’m as mad at as Boeing. As I see it, they are not done repenting for their crimes.
I get, but if everyone does that, Boeing does and we're left with a monopoly. Is that better? Will you feel safer flying on a COMAC?
In the short-term, I imagine USA-based airlines will not be allowed to buy any airplanes from China: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-comac-military-... And perhaps they would not even be allowed to fly in our airspace. But if China decides that it wants to build planes at lower prices than Boeing (or Airbus), then I imagine they will. Their marketshare would grow elsewhere in the globe, reducing Boeing's sales. Can Boeing deal with that? Would the USA borrow China's playbook, and nationalize (or something similar) Boeing to keep it solvent?
The caveate being COMAC is only expensive / has limited room to discount because it uses a lot of western components (for easy regulation/certification only). If PRC moves to a full soveign civil aviation stack, it would probably be very possible to price COMAC competitively, but that's more a medium/long term project. That's probably how it goes the way things are gonig, US probably not going to even certify/liimt where PRC planes can land to kneecap COMAC. PRC + RU can probably do some shenanigans like prevent US planes from flying over their airspace in retaliation and then it's a matter of how much divertion (extra fuel+travel costs) impact bottom line. At the end of the day geopolitics will determine how viable civil aviation projects are.
Biggest issue I can see is that the US will try and weaponise national security against them. Much like how Cisco and Juniper fought to have Huawei and friends blacklisted in most western countries. Just as they become competitive, Boeing and Airbus might start screaming that the chinese planes have communist killswitches and that planes will fall out of the sky if theres a war with China.
Last I heard they're pushing hard to ramp up production and FAA is back to letting them self-certify stuff. And they're under worse financial pressure now than when they made the last round of questionable decisions.
...I'm all for competition & avoiding a monopoly but colour me unconvinced that the root cause has been fixed.
New activist ownership has pushed to diversify frames and phase out reliance on the 737 frame which is significantly more inefficient than modern frames. Boeing doesn't want to make 737s, but they are locked in because of this demand.
Source: Family member trains pilots at Southwest after retiring from a major airline carrier after a career as pilot/check-airman.
Looks like a case of "broken clock is right twice per day"
The COMAC C919 is finally shipping, although it's not a great aircraft and China still imports the engines. COMAC will probably do better in the next round.
Will Embraeier build something in that size range? They could. They already build small midsize aircraft.[3]
This looks like Boeing missing the market.
And it's all because the Southwest CEO wanted to have only one kind of airplane. That's the cause of the 737 MAX.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_New_Midsize_Airplane
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
[3] https://www.embraer.com/e-jets-e2/e195e2/en/
The 737 Max 7, the smallest of the Max series, is longer than the 737-200, the stretched version of the original design. A brand new design is going to be able to ignore that market (which basically doesn't exist any more, the Max 7 only has a handful of orders) and scale upwards to also be a 757 replacement. But it's also going to have basically no commonality with the 737, so it's going to have to genuinely be better than the Airbus product because existing Boeing customers aren't going to benefit from being able to move existing pilots to it without retraining or benefit from common maintenance plans and so on. It obviously should be better - the A320 program started over 40 years ago, it's not that much newer than the 737 - but given Boeing's myriad series of failures in recent years and how painful the 787 program was, it's not impossible that they'll fuck this up entirely.
https://youtu.be/lapFQl6RezA?si=Nef60vinA7hXbnta
Overly nerdy question: I'm curious regarding AoA sensor failure, is there an ability to manually source select the AoA, if not, how about the FMC? This might be called master source select, or which side is controlling (captain or first officer).
Both Boeing and Airbus are spending a lot of time evaluating the next engine options. Last year there was an article that Airbus is more optimistic about CFM's open rotor designs while Boeing thinks the next generation geared turbofan models will win out. That is entirely based on leaks and no-one actually knows how true those assessments are.
The 737 Max was designed with the expectation that the 8 variant would be the sweet spot. Since that time it is clear that there is massive demand for up-gauging and the A321neo is dominating and there is significant demand for the Max10 variant despite it not being certified yet.
I would expect that both Boeing and Airbus are looking at that size (maybe slightly larger) for their next narrowbody with some flexibility for shrinks and/or stretches.
This is not a response to any existing planes. The A320/321 family is very old (50 years mid 2030) and it is expected that both Boeing and Airbus are going to be introducing new airframes to fit the new engine technology.