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.
> Boeing was toying with a new plane to replace the 737, launched in 1967, and had engineers working on the new plane concept. While many airlines liked the idea, existing 737 customers didn’t want to retrain their pilots at huge cost and so lobbied for an updated, more-efficient 737
> Then in 2011 Boeing learned that American Airlines, one of its best customers, had struck a tentative deal with Airbus for potentially hundreds of A320neo planes to renew its short-haul fleet.
American has 304 737s not including the Max.[0] So Boeing considered building a whole new plane, reconsidered when 737 customers wanted to avoid retraining, then did the Max when one of them started moving to a whole new plane anyway. Something somewhere seems not quite thought through.
The reality is that whether Boeing choose to do a re-brand of the Max, the underlying airplane is here to stay. For this class of airline, there are basically two suppliers in the west - Boeing and Airbus. Boeing has about 6,000 orders for the Max, and Airbus has about 10,000 orders for the A320 Neo. Airbus is delivering about 500 planes a year. So let's say an airline bites the bullet and cancels their orders for the Max and goes to Airbus - Airbus won't be able to deliver for the best part of a decade at best. Meanwhile, it would be enormously expensive for Boeing to design a replacement for the 737 Max from scratch and it still has tonnes of outstanding orders. And that's not even considering the fact that these airplanes have a lifespan of 25 years.
So in general there's simply no replacement for the 737 Max. People will be flying on them for the foreseeable future unless something causes a massive drop in air travel.
I read recently the the 737max was specifically designed (and rushed out) as a response to American Airlines ordering Airbus. Boeing made the max a bit more efficient, and kept the type rating the same as selling points.
The issue is it doesn't change the problem: the MAX programs exists for political and (lack of) ethical reasons: companies wedded to 737s (like Southwest) which want larger and more efficient planes without type change (without having to re-train crew). And rather than refuse to work on this, Boeing's management asserted they could do it, then left engineering to square the circle.
> When they DON'T move at glacial pace you get the 737 MAX.
I’d argue the existence of the 737 MAX was a response to the FAA moving at a glacial pace, if you want to look at root causes.
The 737 MAX exists because Boeing was getting their butts handed to them in the market by the Airbus A320 Neo due to its superior fuel efficiency.
Boeing engineers wanted to create a new clean sheet single aisle aircraft to replace the 50 year old 737 (+737 NG) design. However, Boeing management decided that it would take too long to design + get it past the FAA , so they pivoted to another 737 upgrade. Another factor in this decision was that upgrading the 737 would allow the airlines to transfer their pilots over with minimal training.
However, to keep the same "type" as a 737, Boeing had to keep the planes dynamics exactly the same as the previous model.
Simultaneously, Boeing went on a full on lobbying blitz to get the FAA to allow them to “self certify” aspects of the design. Boeing had a legitimate argument here, the ESEA had streamlined the type variant process years ago allowing Airbus to quickly iterate on their existing designs.
So congress/FAA finally relents and allows Boeing to bring stuff in house. However, in retrospect, this was done without the collaboration and checks that the ESEA and Airbus have implemented, ensuring that the process generates the correct results.
If the FAA I’ve been quicker to read the tea leaves and implement a collaborative model, I’d like to think that flies in the 737 MAX would’ve been caught.
I'm sure it's slightly more complicated, but is the MAX not essentially a 737 airframe with larger engines mounter further forward? Seems like there's a lot to work with there. A new type certification, at this point, sounds pretty good. Otherwise, there ought to be a lot of salvageable product there.
I doubt that doing a new type cert is tantamount to engineering an entirely new airframe. I think the thing that makes it less appealing to airlines now is the lack of faith in the integrity of Boeing engineering in general.
I'll argue that making the MAX behave the same as a non MAX 737 is a reachable and reasonable engineering goal, the process failed because it didnt do it safely.
Airbus absolutely uses its fly-by-wire system to change the handling characteristics of its airplanes, to make them fly the same - I see no reason why Boeing couldn't do the same thing.
What’s wrong with modernizing a 737 is exactly what happened. The design has already been modified to the limit. There is nowhere to go from here. Boeing spent the money to develop the MAX but they still have to develop a new plane to replace it. In the long term it will cost more than just building the plane they actually needed.
I’m no airplane expert but I find the trend lines of the industry interesting and one trend has been how fuel prices and long lead times on fuel efficiency has lead to formerly continental planes now flying intercontinental. AirBus has really done this well and airlines love to be able to reuse resources. With the MAX there is a sense that airline execs are spooked by a new plane since it requires a ton of new training and maintenance outfitting. So Boeing, possibly smartly, tried to create what these airlines would pay for (a fuel efficient airplane) that would marketable be super similar to a very popular plane. But this lead to rushing the process and making too many affordances and hiding the differences from airlines and training material for fear of spooking business execs worried about cost.
Nothing mind boggling. Boeing are trying desperately to avoid new type rating. That would leave them in the same business position where they were before developing MAX and with a bad image to boot.
Not saying they are right, but they just don't have many good moves.
Doing the Right thing leaves them years behind. It will also limit airline expansion. Airbus cannot pick up slack and there are no other players in the market.
It is a clusterfuck but like it or not 737 MAX is too big to fall(pun intended) .
IIRC part of the problem with the Max was that since it was based on the 737 it bypassed a lot of processes that a brand new design would've had to go through. Both on the regulatory and pilot training side (eg a pilot who was already qualified on other 737 variants would get a fast tracked and probably inadequate training)
This also presumes that an engineering-driven Boeing would have even built the 737 MAX in the first place. In all likelihood, they would have stayed the course in building a new middle-market, narrow body aircraft rather than continuing to retrofit the aging 737 airframe.
That's the real counterfactual here. Would Boeing have iterated yet again on the 737, or would they have done a clean sheet design instead?
Market forces drove Boeing to rush out a more fuel efficient 737. Even absent regulatory incentives, market forces drive them to want to deliver a 737-dimensioned plane, because a huge selling point for the NG and MAX is that they're still compatible with decades' old infrastructure at rarely-upgraded regional airports.
Bolting large enough engines to deliver the market-desired fuel efficiency on the market-desired airframe dimensions of the MAX necessarily required mounting them so far forward that the entire airframe is fundamentally prone to pulling into a stall, and correcting that is why MCAS exists.
Certification costs are far from the only reason Boeing has never sat down and designed a successor for 737, even though they've done so for numerous other planes -- half the problem with the 737 is that its engineering achilles heel (the incredibly low ground clearance) is simultaneously a key feature to a large portion of the customer base. Correcting it means all of those customers finally upgrading their ground infrastructure, which leads to Airbus suddenly being a viable competitor for those routes.
The problem is, most airlines who ordered or are considering to order the 737 MAX have not much choice. The only real competitor is Airbus. But not only does Airbus alreay have filled order books, so cannot deliver any additional orders in a reasonable time frame, but also this would move the market into a near-monopoly, something that airlines are trying to avoid strongly, as that would remove their negotiation powers with the manufacturer.
This shows, that a duopoly can be as bad as a monopoly and can degenerate into one quickly. Consequently, it should be avoided as much as possible. Merging Boeing with McDonnell Douglas was a big mistake by these events. As was, not to develop a successor to the 737 even long before the MAX development started. After 40 years, tweaking a very successfull design isn't enough any more, there should be a proper successor.
Unless some more large flaws are discovered, the 737 MAX won't be cancelled and it will be bought. The market is trapped. Airlines, who operate on 737 only will have to change their operations soon, as the MAX can be only a gap-filler now. But on short notice there is no other possible replacement available. Boeing will certainly start a replacment design soon, but that won't arrive till the late 20ies. This might of course be the opening for new aircraft companies to enter the market, e.g. Chineese companies or Japanese.
I think you misunderstand. We got the 737 Max because of competition from Airbus in the form of the A320neo series - otherwise Boeing would have taken a few more years and made a clean-sheet design.
EDIT: I'm not saying the 737 Max issues are Airbus's fault. I'm saying that the existence of competition is why we ended up with the quick&dirty stopgap solution instead of a better solution further in the future.
>The mass media also omits the reason for the MAX. The new engines gave it 15% less fuel burn. This is massive cost savings (and less pollution, too.)
Sure they did. It's all over the reporting. Just from a cursory search:
>Boeing gave the Max aircraft larger engines for greater fuel efficiency"[1]
>Consequently, improving fuel efficiency has emerged as one of the major bases of competition between airline manufacturers.[2]
>Airbus announced the A320neo, a more fuel-efficient version of the A320...Boeing had to choose between short-term gain and long-term pain. The simpler option was to refurbish the 737NG with a bigger, more fuel efficient engine.[3]
>Mistakes began nearly a decade ago when Boeing was caught flat-footed after its archrival Airbus announced a new fuel-efficient plane that threatened the company’s core business. It rushed the competing 737 Max to market as quickly as possible.[4]
>That threatened to change in 2010 when Airbus introduced a version of the 320 called the Neo (for “new engine option”) that offered large improvements in fuel efficiency, range and payload. The following year, American Airlines warned that it might abandon Boeing and buy hundreds of the new Airbus models. Boeing responded with a rush program to re-engineer the 737[5]
The real issue was leadership strategy and poor process control.
Why do you think this? The 737 is the most popular airplane of all time, and airline orders are trending towards smaller planes. Airbus can't make enough A320NEOs to capitalize on the slowing orders from the MAX situation, and the MAX is still a very competitive product.
Aviation regulations are often written in blood, and while the MAX is obviously not in a great place, it's not necessarily doomed forever. Nobody thinks twice about the batteries on a 787 anymore, or the pylon assemblies on the DC10.
I don't think deregulation, mergers or accountants killed the Max or its passengers. I think it was an engineering culture in love with the simplicity of an idea that on the face of it was genius. What made the Max work was the idea that you could use software - something Boeing in its military work already was very good at - to create essentially a new plane without all the rigors and costs of creating a new plane. This vision allowed Boeing to believe in its own BS that rather than have a collection of static designs incapable of evolution, it had a platform. The concept of the platform was the differentiator that Airbus had that Boeing did not have until it marketed the Max. Through software, the 737 became a way to create the illusion of a platform that could serve most if not all markets (wide body being the obvious exception). Once Boeing was in love with this idea, it never put it back through the rigors needed because to do so would have been to admit that the 737 wasn't a platform and that they were in fact building a new plane. I won't find it surprising that in a forum (HN) visited by engineers this comment doesn't receive the mother of all downvotes. However, I think if you're looking at Boeing honestly and not clouding your views with a whole bunch of economist-mumbo-jumbo about deregulation, you'll see that Boeing is just a leading indicator for what's about to happen in a lot of industries if it isn't already. My view, stop loving the elegance of your engineering and start thinking about the lives you actually impact. <-- That -- is what was lost.
> 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.
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