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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

#131

Post by mrguyorama »

silverquiet wrote: post #45
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 t…

The 737-MAX is not "unstable by design". It has the exact same positive stability as other planes in 99% of it's flight envelope.

The remaining exception is that, at a certain AoA, speed, thrust, etc, there is a case where adding thrust pushes the nose up more than it does for the normal 737

The nose push is not abnormal, it is not unsafe, it is not unexpected. All planes with engines below the inertial "center" of the plane have this, including every 737 and every A320.

The problem was, this meant that it's flight characteristics were "different" from the older 737s. The entire point of any plane that is even a little bit 737 is to sell to airlines as "This is still a 737 and you don't need to train anyone in anything extra".

MCAS was built to change how the plane acts in this very specific regime, to act more like older 737s and counteract this nose push.

MCAS was entirely unnecessary except for business and policy goals. MCAS killed people because properly training aircrews for it would have gone against the entire point of the 737 MAX.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#132

Post by jacquesm »

sauercrowd wrote: post #35
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.

The A220 is an absolute treat. Can't put exactly my finger on why, but it just feels right in size, noise, the little screens at the top. Flown it once or twice with AirBaltic, and would love to take it again.

AirBaltic was my introduction to the series as well and it felt for the first time in 30 years or so that I was in a modern aircraft. The last time before that was in a then brand new 747, which I absolutely loved to fly.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#133

Post by Night_Thastus »

sgjohnson wrote: post #121
Night_Thastus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With rare exception, people just buy the cheapest ticket. They moan and complain about this or that, but they still do the same thing. So, airlines structure and furnish accordingly.

> So, airlines structure and furnish accordingly. By cutting the number of economy seats and increasing the number of business and first class ones? Airlines don’t care about the economy traveller. They are there just to fill the space for a marginal profit.

They need both. They want the high-margin business and first-class passengers, but with those alone the volume would be too low and overall prices too high to make operating feasible.

The high-volume low-margin economy customers keep seats filled to prevent wasted potential space. On most commercial planes, flight is only profitable if nearly every seat is filled.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#134

Post by rkomorn »

karmelapple wrote: post #113
rkomorn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a dinner with a team of Airbus folks we were working with at a previous job, they talked about how difficult it was getting to source CPUs for the A320 after 30 years. It's definitely a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" thing, but I ask myself a similar question: at some point whoever is producing these chips is going to stop finding it worthwhile and end production, no? But then I also assume the people who work o…

They do :) And if the companies who produce these chips continue to make a healthy profit, why would they stop?

The scenario that comes to my mind is: these chips had a lot of potential customers 30 years ago, and now may be down to just one or two customers left buying too few units to make it worthwhile.

Presumably, they have "guaranteed" buyers but also, if so, why would Airbus have issues sourcing CPUs, for example?

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#135

Post by wyldberry »

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.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#136

Post by charcircuit »

pixl97 wrote: post #82
eastbound wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a beautiful conference (which I’ve lost) saying that science and technology can regress. We always talk about “the progress” but things do regress all the time; Tests I’ve cleared for employment can’t be passed by newcomers, the NASA wouldn’t be able to put a rocket on the moon today, and there is no downloadable Jira competitor anymore. In fact the speed of innovation is, pretty much, equal to the speed of m…

This here should trigger a red flag when you hear anyone say "The government should be run like a business". Businesses kill themselves all the time from the loss of institutional knowledge. We see stuff like "government spends X a year paying people Y to build almost no product Z". Instead, we're paying people Y to be ready to build Z when something goes terribly wrong like war.

When they say run like a business that doesn't mean that it should be done like a reckless business. Plenty of businesses invest into things like disaster recovery or insurance which they may never need.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#137

Post by FrustratedMonky »

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…

Microsoft seems to do ok re-inventing itself, maybe through internal conflict and cage fights.

I wonder who the IBM/Xerox of today is? Amazon? Facebook?

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#138

Post by bunderbunder »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #125
mrguyorama wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why is the Lunar Gateway such an essential part of the Artemis project's mission architecture when we didn't need anything like that for Apollo? The explicit reason is: Why would we pay another $200 billion to just do Apollo again? People were bored of Apollo before it even finished its original set of missions.

Gateway is also a trial run for conducting operations at a Mars/Phobos/Diemos station.

But then you've got to ask why would we want an orbital Mars/Phobos/Deimos station?

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#139

Post by cptroot »

hinkley wrote: post #55
nonethewiser wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Has a degree that’s basically informatics management. My coworker took a class with case studies and the theory presented by that class was that all successful projects have at least one person who has fit the entire system into their head. They can tell you what happens if you pull on this thread. What the consequences are of trying to remove this feature. Lose them and you are fucke…

That sounds like a very interesting theory, with an actionable result. Do you have any links for more reading?

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#140

Post by sgjohnson »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #133
sgjohnson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, airlines structure and furnish accordingly. By cutting the number of economy seats and increasing the number of business and first class ones? Airlines don’t care about the economy traveller. They are there just to fill the space for a marginal profit.

They need both . They want the high-margin business and first-class passengers, but with those alone the volume would be too low and overall prices too high to make operating feasible. The high-volume low-margin economy customers keep seats filled to prevent wasted potential space. On most commercial planes, flight is only profitable if nearly every seat is filled.

> They need both.

No. If they could fill the entire plane with business/first class seats and sell out >70% (maybe even less) of it, you bet they would.

The only reason why economy class exists is because they can’t. But the demand for more premium travel is steadily increasing, which will lead to shrinking economy cabins.

So yes, they do need to fill the space. But I wouldn’t say that they need the economy passengers.

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