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Wouldn’t Southwest have been as opposed 20 years ago to a 737 replacement that required a new type certificate as they were when Boeing was marketing the Max?
by nocoiner 3y ago
Wouldn’t Southwest have been as opposed 20 years ago to a 737 replacement that required a new type certificate as they were when Boeing was marketing the Max?
As I understand it, their insistence that their pilots be able to fly a new model with only a limited refresher course was one of the major factors that prevented Boeing from launching a clean sheet design.
Edit: Not meaning to blame this debacle on Southwest (I think American also took a similarly hard line) and certainly not meaning to absolve Boeing from many, many poor decisions. But I think it’s fairly easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that of course Boeing should have pursued a real 737 replacement, and I’m not sure that the commercial factors that weighed against that would have been diminished regardless of timeline.
- bcrl 3y agoSometimes the customer is the worst person to spec out what a new product should be. Great engineering will build a product that draws the customer in and wants to buy because it's better in all the ways the customer didn't realize they wanted.
- panick21_ 3y agoAt the end of the say, Southwest doesn't really have an alternative. If Boeing comes out with a next generation 737 replacement, that is significantly more fuel effizient and no new version of the 737, then what is Southwest gone do? Never upgrade their planes? Go from all Boeing to all Airbus? Even when the 737 replacement has better economics then the A320? If Boeing were smart they would have bought the C-Series, and added the C-500 model quickly. That would have been the perfect plane to get all the 737 people to switch. Instead Boeing handed those planes to Airbus, and now Airbus has 2 planes better then the 737 Aax.
- coredog64 3y agoSouthwest has had a lot of pull with Boeing for a long time. It was a fight to get them to accept the glass cockpit in the 737NG.