A 757 replacement? Not going to happen. Why? Both Boeing and Airbus have a comfortably thick order book for aircraft that can do 98 percent of the routes, spare parts galore, and trained pilots, mechanics, simulators and inventories. Developing an entirely new aircraft is incredibly expensive. Assuming they are talking about essentially a narrowbody 787 with GTF engines, the program would never break even, because the 737 and A320 have been improved well beyond what they were originally conceived to be.

Which is of course, sad. Because the 757 does what it does very, very well. And it does that because it incorporated lessons learned, and was engineered to a very high standard by people who saw what happened to B17's, and B52's when things went badly. Extra metal, extra power, extra wheels, extra brakes, extra system redundancy all add up to an aircraft which has no equal.

But the calculus used by airlines today are purely cold numbers. Being able to stop on a slippery runway, climb over weather, board pax in separate classes, takeoff and land on high, hot and short runways, and provide a comfortable and safe environment for the crew is not part of that calculus. You know who still cares about that stuff? People who fly corporate or private. Look at the G650 or the Citation X. Mach .93 at 45,000 feet, synthetic vision, XM weather, lightning detection, heads up display, satcom, datalink. Nothing but state of the art. The best we can hope for is a third manufacturer who decides to create the next generation of commercial airliner. They'd have to be crazy though. Or maybe heavily state supported.