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Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

wsj.com

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Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#41

Post by scrlk »

nostrademons wrote: post #21

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, everybod…

To add to this & the Jobs interview - an oil industry proverb: a healthy oil company has a geologist in charge, a mature one has an engineer in charge, a declining one has an accountant in charge, and a dying one has a lawyer in charge.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#42

Post by lemonlearnings »

downrightmike wrote: post #23
recursivedoubts wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to what AI-generated flight control software can do!

Hey hey hey, the $9/hr software engineer will be doing all the work, unless they can find a $1/hr guy. The first guy should just become a vendor and subcontract down to the $1/hr guy, that's what the rest of Boeing's supply chain is doing already. https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/b...

Ah the hitman business model

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#43

Post by quibono »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #40

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 enab…

It'd be a new airframe and not an elongation of an elongation of an existing one... So we might be lucky this time.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#45

Post by silverquiet »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #40

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 enab…

I read "Airframe" by Michael Crichton probably twenty years ago, and it was around ten years old at that time. I remember that that book talked about how the planes were unstable by design and required software to maintain proper flight characteristics, and that this was so because it was more efficient. The book is fiction, but I doubt it was far off the mark at the time. I suspect that there is no going back from this state of things, and so if there must be software, it should be good software.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#46

Post by lemonlearnings »

jimbo808 wrote: post #25
ionwake wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it couldnt be worse than what they released last time could it? EDIT> what is scarier? the quality of the software they released or that someone on HN is defending it?

I mean, they botched one piece of software in order to retrofit an old plane with catastrophic results. God knows what the Wall Street zombie version of Boeing will do with a whole new plane, especially in the age of AI enshittification.

Also the maga tariff and bizarre interventions age.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#47

Post by lisper »

nostrademons wrote: post #21

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, everybod…

> 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

It's not just building a product end-to-end. Tim Cook is a supply-chain guy. He knows how to build a product. What he doesn't know how is how to design a new one. This is the reason that all of the "new" stuff that has come out of Apple since Cook took over is actually just riffs on old degrees of freedom: thinner phones. New colors. Different UI skins. The only thing I can think of that Apple has done in the Cook era that was actually new was the Apple Vision Pro. That was really cool, but it was a commercial disaster, the modern equivalent of the Lisa or the NeXT.

Jobs took Lisa and NeXT failures and turned them into the Mac and OS/X. There is no hint that Apple intends to do anything with the Vision Pro, and they've already been scooped by Meta.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#48

Post by rkomorn »

jacquesm wrote: post #31

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.

Replacing the 737 MAX with a competitor to the A220? Something does not make sense.

The A220 series' maximum capacity is basically the 737 MAX series' minimum capacity.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#50

Post by nonethewiser »

nostrademons wrote: post #21

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, everybod…

This is eerily similar to the comment on the thread about LLMs that says software teams have to maintain a "theory" or model about how the software works and when they cant, they can no longer function beyond limited forms of maintenance. And in that comment the idea was that LLMs are accelerating this dynamic.

I dont want to stretch the analogy too thin but in this case instead of LLMs being a catalyst, perhaps its a monopoly.

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