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Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

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Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#151

Post by selectodude »

charcircuit wrote: post #136
pixl97 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Running like a business means providing services to profitable customers. This is, surprisingly, the exact opposite of what government is supposed to be doing. The USPS would be plenty profitable if it didn’t have to maintain the infrastructure to deliver a letter from Honolulu to Barrow for 50 cents. Medicare? Not the best business model. Roads? Forget it.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#152

Post by glitchc »

baud147258 wrote: post #89
imoverclocked wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest tell will be just how over budget the development process becomes. Another issue in large companies trying to build something new is the scope creep which leads to committees and then decision by committee. If the folks leading this effort in Boeing are smart, they will keep the size of the team as small as possible. Maybe they will even hire some people back to lead this effort... assuming they can find…

> If you want passengers to want your plane, design it without sardines in mind; People don't like being sardines. Isn't that something that's more the responsibility of the airlines, who decide how many seats are put in a plane, following the limits of the aircraft? Like if you want more legroom you take a more expensive ticket from a company that doesn't try to cram as many passengers in each plane

Yup, as another poster noted, the seating density and comfort are decided by airlines. Aircraft manufacturers install standardized rails for seating and console selection, and allow for many different configurations.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#153

Post by Animats »

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.

[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/

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#154

Post by cosmic_cheese »

spookie wrote: post #122
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more likely than not that they will, in my opinion. As an owner of both an AVP and Quest 2, the former is a lot nicer to use than the latter with the exception of VR games, and my hunch is that Valve is going to eat Meta's lunch for gaming with Deckard (which will be at least as good as the Quest 3, but much more open, paired with a vastly more populated and popular marketplace, probably won't treat PCVR as an a…

Having experienced the Quest Pro I can say that Apple has absolutely no clue what the focus should be on. Hint: being able to grab a well balanced headset that is so easy to put on as a cap. This makes you not think if you are going to watch or play in VR, you just do it.

I think Apple knows exactly what they're doing, but was forced to choose between making the product more about demonstrating their tech and end goals or being mass market mediocre and chose the former. Nobody would've cared about what amounted to a Quest wrapped in a Cupertino design with similar performance, specs, etc. It's very much in line with the original iPod and iPhone, both of which took a few iterations before becoming category-defining hits. It'll probably be the second or third-gen Vision device that'll fix the AVP's nits while also keeping or improving upon its strong points.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#155

Post by wucke13 »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #93
imoverclocked wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest tell will be just how over budget the development process becomes. Another issue in large companies trying to build something new is the scope creep which leads to committees and then decision by committee. If the folks leading this effort in Boeing are smart, they will keep the size of the team as small as possible. Maybe they will even hire some people back to lead this effort... assuming they can find…

> Given that outcome, I (from the peanuts gallery) would design the aircraft to handle in some ideal way using MCAS-like automation to fix any deviation from that ideal, from the beginning. Of course, that's starting to head down the road of a more-Airbus-like design. The 787 and 777 are already purely fly by wire. Their entire feel is made up. Boeing simply has a different design philosophy on how much a pilot shoul…

I think what parent was about is open vs. closed loop control, not fly-by-wire or not. Both their and your point stand of course.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#156

Post by dreamcompiler »

imoverclocked wrote: post #59
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…

The biggest tell will be just how over budget the development process becomes. Another issue in large companies trying to build something new is the scope creep which leads to committees and then decision by committee. If the folks leading this effort in Boeing are smart, they will keep the size of the team as small as possible. Maybe they will even hire some people back to lead this effort... assuming they can find…

> The biggest thing that will change are the handling characteristics since they won't have to match that of a previous aircraft.

I'd expect the handling characteristics to be pretty similar to the 737. The biggest change will be to raise the whole aircraft a few more feet off the ground (i.e. taller landing gear), which will let the plane use large-diameter high-bypass turbofans.

The short landing gear on the 737 was the root of the chain that led to the whole MCAS fiasco.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#157

Post by peterhhchan »

jeffbee wrote: post #96
speed_spread wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing's only answer to the A220 was to get the US administration to impose a 220% import tarif on it. It didn't even compete with Boeing models. Fuck Boeing.

How does such a tariff even work? Can't an airline finance all of its aircraft through an entity in the Maldives or whatever?

Airbus had to move production from Quebec to Georgia (US)

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#158

Post by mjg59 »

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.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#159

Post by mrguyorama »

hinkley wrote: post #104
masklinn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not great, the MAX would have been fine if Boeing (and their airlines) had not clung so hard to the type rating. Without that, MCAS could have been left out entirely alongside its utterly botched implementation. But that would have required a heavier certification process, and some pilot re-training. And they couldn't have that. Of course that wouldn't have freed Boeing from the rest of its dismal record (MCAS…

Indeed. A fully new airframe likely won’t try to avoid training and certification overhead. Ripping that bandaid off will cut a lot of bullshit. But, there’s only so much engine you can shove under a narrow body aircraft. Landing gear is limited by physics and just making it taller won’t fix everything. I just looked and from what I can find on Wikipedia this may warrant a new model from P&W or CFM because I’m not se…

>Landing gear is limited by physics and just making it taller won’t fix everything.

Every other plane is higher than the 737. The only reason the engines needed to be pushed forward on the 737, is that the 737 was built back in the day to be lower to the ground for easier operations at poorer airports, with things like stairs and baggage.

The 737 doesn't need to be as short as it is anymore because the vast majority of them now fly to airports with jetbridges and modern bag handling equipment.

The A320 is not as short as the 737 despite serving the same market, and can handle bigger engines.

But the entire problem stems from wanting to abuse the 737 type rating even further. If they were fine with a new type rating, they could put the engines pretty much wherever they want, put nice tall landing gear, etc.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#160

Post by selectodude »

wyldberry wrote: post #135

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 f…

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.
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