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I am not an aeronautical engineer. A year or two ago I read a comment here that certainly seemed legitimate that talked about airplane design and it went someth
by cletus 7y ago
I am not an aeronautical engineer. A year or two ago I read a comment here that certainly seemed legitimate that talked about airplane design and it went something like this (paraphrased because I can't find it now):
> As soon as you move the engines, you probably need to move the wings. As soon as you move the wings, you need to redesign the airframe. As soon as you do that you're designing a whole new plane.
I can't even remember if this was talking about the Max at all.
So it seems to me the core problem here is Boeing had reached the limit of what they could do with a 50 year old airframe while maintaining the common type rating and aircraft and engine design have simply changed. Airbus may eventually have that problem with the A320 family. I really don't know. But they don't have it yet.
Part of controlling costs at a budget airline is maintaining a single fleet (in type rating terms). The two choices here seem to be the 737 or the A320.
The Max came about because there was a huge captured demand for it from the likes of Southwest. Would this have happened without the MD merger? I can't say but I'd be surprised if it couldn't given the demand from budget airlines.
Of course people like to take an issue like this and tie it to whatever axe they want to grind too.
- temac 7y ago> Airbus may eventually have that problem with the A320 family. I really don't know. But they don't have it yet. Airbus is already fly-by-wire on the A320, and they know how to do it not too stupidly. They can provide the same control laws and feedbacks to new models without introducing ugly hacks on top of mechanical commands. That helps. I believe other Airbus families already use controls that are very similar to the ones used in the A320, and even if that's not of the same type rating that probably also ease training a lot. The 737 will eventually have to go; even the somehow modernized versions are a quite outdated way to make big commercial airplanes nowadays. (And the whole idea of grandfathering regulation is utterly stupid, btw.)
- Gibbon1 7y agoI think the thought is without the merger there is a deterrent timeline where Boeing maintains enough management competence to not turn development of the 787 into an outsourced/vendor funded cluster fuck. Which might have left them with enough funding to replace the 737 with something modern and safe. Meaning failure to develop the 787 on time an on budget left them with no time to develop a proper replacement for the 737 without losing customers to the Airbus 320. Seriously it took Boeing about 9 years to develop and deliver the 787.