3 ms·

Why was a new single-aisle plane important?

by fouc 8y ago

kalleboo 8y ago
The continued pursuit of increased fuel efficiency. Airbus managed to make their A320neo more fuel efficient than Boeing's 737 and so Boeing were at risk of losing customers to Airbus. The new, more efficient engines are bigger and hence didn't fit under the wings of the 737. Hence the "hacks" Boeing did to fit them on 737 that required software augmentation to get it to work safely. A newly designed plane taking into account the size of the engines would have been more inherently stable without software augmentation. Boeing's solution will probably be to improve the software augmentation by fixing the behavior of error detection and correction in the case of sensor troubles (such as adding clear warnings which some airlines have already added as a optional features)
- salex89 8y ago
  Maybe it's an overstatement, but further improvements on the 737 is beating a dead horse. Maybe even the MAX was a stretch, but if it weren't for this particular issue, it would live a long and happy life. Not that it won't after this fixes. It will probably be the most audited plane in the skies. It's a great plane that connected the world, surely, but there is no denying that the A320 family is just more modern and still has more potential to be squeezed from it. Starting from the trivial facts that it has a higher ground clearance and the cockpit has more room to improve on instrumentation.
toast0 8y ago
A lot of commercial flights are on single-aisle planes. The 737 is a very old design, with many updates, and a brand new plane designed from the ground up to fit today's market will likely be more significantly more efficient. It's just that the 737 has been good enough with changes every so often for a long time, so Boeing has done a lot more fully new designs for larger planes; some of which had tremendous gains in efficiency while increasing passenger comfort; the 787 is reported to use about 20% less fuel than the 767.

Why was a new single-aisle plane important?

by fouc 8y ago

Why was a new single-aisle plane important?

The continued pursuit of increased fuel efficiency. Airbus managed to make their A320neo more fuel efficient than Boeing's 737 and so Boeing were at risk of losing customers to Airbus. The new, more efficient engines are bigger and hence didn't fit under the wings of the 737. Hence the "hacks" Boeing did to fit them on 737 that required software augmentation to get it to work safely. A newly designed plane taking into account the size of the engines would have been more inherently stable without software augmentation. Boeing's solution will probably be to improve the software augmentation by fixing the behavior of error detection and correction in the case of sensor troubles (such as adding clear warnings which some airlines have already added as a optional features)

salex89 8y ago
Maybe it's an overstatement, but further improvements on the 737 is beating a dead horse. Maybe even the MAX was a stretch, but if it weren't for this particular issue, it would live a long and happy life. Not that it won't after this fixes. It will probably be the most audited plane in the skies. It's a great plane that connected the world, surely, but there is no denying that the A320 family is just more modern and still has more potential to be squeezed from it. Starting from the trivial facts that it has a higher ground clearance and the cockpit has more room to improve on instrumentation.

toast0 8y ago

A lot of commercial flights are on single-aisle planes. The 737 is a very old design, with many updates, and a brand new plane designed from the ground up to fit today's market will likely be more significantly more efficient. It's just that the 737 has been good enough with changes every so often for a long time, so Boeing has done a lot more fully new designs for larger planes; some of which had tremendous gains in efficiency while increasing passenger comfort; the 787 is reported to use about 20% less fuel than the 767.