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Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

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Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#111

Post by smokefoot »

Beldin wrote: post #87
throwup238 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list of orders and deliveries is public: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_... Most orders were before the accidents but the vast majority haven't been canceled. Boeing has only delivered a fraction of them; they have another 3,000 to deliver before they get to the orders placed after the accidents (~1400).

If you cancel, you'll have to place an order elsewhere and end up at the back of their log. Since there isn't that much competition, this means Airbus. Moreover: this also means introducing another brand of aircraft into your fleet. That is a far greater maintenance headache than "merely" various types by the same company. Basically: Switching cost are stratospheric.

Most carriers operate both Airbus and Boeing. Low cost carriers have less diversity and operate either 737s or A300s. Southwest is the only airline I can think of that would have their hand forced in this way.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#112

Post by AdrianB1 »

bluGill wrote: post #44
mcv wrote: post #34

Here's what I don't understand: the 737 MAX was introduced in 2017. In 2018, two of them dropped out of the sky, the grounded for a while, it turned out Boeing had lost its engineering culture and its priority for safety, and it became clear that the 737 MAX had some serious design problems that they had tried to fix in software. And according to this article, the 737 MAX is Boeing's best selling plane ever. Why? Why…

What choice do they have? Airplanes wear out from metal fatigue over time, so airlines must replace their airplanes regularly. It isn't safe to keep operating the same airplanes for decades. (this very much depends on what the plane is made of - so some airplanes from the 1950s are still safe while others from 2000 are not). Sometimes airplanes are scraped by selling to some "third world" airline that keeps operating…

> It isn't safe to keep operating the same airplanes for decades.

Me, crying while flying a 50 year old Cessna 172.

Oh, luckily you are wrong this time: most planes at top airlines are replaced with more competitive ones, not because they depleted the airframe. The rest is replaceable - airplanes replace engines more often than some people change their socks and everything else is either regularly checked or replaced based on a strict schedule.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#113

Post by AdrianB1 »

boppo1 wrote: post #61
bluGill wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What choice do they have? Airplanes wear out from metal fatigue over time, so airlines must replace their airplanes regularly. It isn't safe to keep operating the same airplanes for decades. (this very much depends on what the plane is made of - so some airplanes from the 1950s are still safe while others from 2000 are not). Sometimes airplanes are scraped by selling to some "third world" airline that keeps operating…

>eventually the wings will fall off an old plane in the air. Has this ever happened for an airliner?

Nope, but all the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack plane wings had to be replaced recently due to cracks and Concorde planes were retired due to cracks (micro-cracks, to be more precise). Aluminium does that a lot.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#114

Post by inamberclad »

themadturk wrote: post #64
linkjuice4all wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't seen it mentioned yet - but there are several reasons why airlines continue to buy from Boeing - specifically the 737 variants. - The pilots are already trained (this is a big one and is part of the reason behind the MCAS debacle - new features mean retraining which costs money and limits which crews can fly which aircraft) [0] - The 737 generally fits easily at a lot of airports since it's been around for a…

In addition, some airlines, such as Southwest, fly only 737s, taking consistency in training and maintenance to the max.

Wonder how that will work out for Southwest after this.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#115

Post by globalnode »

seems like a bit of blame game to me -- i doubt its the merger, its just the evolution of business as we have it today. having people in charge whose top priority is financial efficiency will destroy any org (looking at you too universities). i think the end result will be fragmentation as the rest of us flee.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#116

Post by rootusrootus »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #109
soperj wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason they didn't want to raise the fuselage was to pretend it was actually a 737 and not a completely different plane, so that they could avoid all the testing required. If they'd just built it properly in the first place...

There was no way to raise the fuselage. That would require longer landing gear with no space in the wings to retract it, so it required new wings, leading to re-certifications of both the planes and the pilots and the associated costs. This grand-fathering of 737 is the reason it still does not have fly-by-wire in 2024: it simulates the antique original 737.

In retrospect maybe they should have based the MAX on the 757. It's more or less a stretched 737 with longer landing gear. Sounds perfect for installing those enormous engines.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#117

Post by selectodude »

smokefoot wrote: post #111
Beldin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cancel, you'll have to place an order elsewhere and end up at the back of their log. Since there isn't that much competition, this means Airbus. Moreover: this also means introducing another brand of aircraft into your fleet. That is a far greater maintenance headache than "merely" various types by the same company. Basically: Switching cost are stratospheric.

Most carriers operate both Airbus and Boeing. Low cost carriers have less diversity and operate either 737s or A300s. Southwest is the only airline I can think of that would have their hand forced in this way.

Southwest and Ryanair were the airlines that demanded a 737 and said if Boeing didn't make one, they were going to switch to Airbus. It's just all kind of a clusterfuck.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#118

Post by rgmerk »

Ruined or not, Boeing is too big to fail.

No way in the world will airlines, or the US government, accept a world where Airbus is the only company able to sell you a passenger airliner. Nor would they accept a word where the alternative to Airbus was Comac.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#119

Post by drtgh »

mastercheif wrote: post #65
breadwinner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really that cheap? 737 MAX uses 20% less fuel. Incidentally, this fuel-efficient design is what lead to the design defect. The fuel efficiency is thanks to larger engine (larger engines burn hotter and use less fuel). To make the larger engine fit under the wing without raising the fuselage, they had to reposition the engine forward. This forward-positioning of the engine causes the nose to pitch up when acce…

> This forward-positioning of the engine causes the nose to pitch up when accelerating quickly (and this can cause stall) and they fixed this defect using software to push the nose down. MCAS was not intended to be an anti-stall system. The only purpose of MCAS was to have the 737 MAX exactly mimick the 737 NG's (previous gen) pitch dynamics so that airlines wouldn't have to retrain their pilots on the 737 MAX. Comme…

MCAS it is correcting the design defect due to put larger motors. Without MCAS that aircraft do not meets the certification requirements for to fly.

This video is about bledend-wing designs, but it touches on the 737 MAX problem with illustrations,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59A8-rKRs-0&t=705s

at minute 11:45 , but it's also worth watching the part at 4:31 , where another illustration explains the forces at work in an aircraft, using a classic 737 as an example.

It is on a different subject but the whole video is very interesting.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#120

Post by Litost »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #75

I feel like this pattern occurs in too many companies across all sectors: 1. Company is product-quality focused 2. Beats competition and creates mini-monopoly 3. Sales becomes somewhat inelastic to changes in quality 4. This leads "cost-cutting" and marketing focused execs/decision making to beat out product quality execs/decision making 5. Company's product quality takes predictable linear path to the bottom

Normalisation of Deviance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o
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