Originally Posted by
alvrb211
Not quite!
Neither Boeing or Airbus will have a new airframe for the midsize market inside of the next 15 years!
Aircraft manufacturers have engaged in customer relationship management for many years with airlines responsible for major design input. This is nothing new!
This time it is going to be an organized formal process, in the past it was a bit haphazard with boeing sometimes only listening to folks who happened to know someone, or who wanted to order some airplanes early. My understanding is that they will seek industry consensus next time (not sure how hard that is going to be).
Originally Posted by
alvrb211
With respect to geared turbofans, only Pratt and Whitney has gone down that route and they are no longer a major player in the airline industry. Big guns GE and Rolls Royce are not interested in geared turbofans.
Maybe you haven't kept up on things...P&W is definitely designing a GTF which can power a NB. GE and RR are poking around with open rotors and improved conventional engines. Open Rotors are potentially more efficient, but they have serious technical drawbacks...the airframers delayed their next NB partly in order to give engine technology time to mature before they commit. An airframe has to be designed from a clean slate to use an open rotor.
Originally Posted by
alvrb211
US manufacturers need to adopt a more European philosophy!
The challenge for Boeing is to come up with a family of aircraft like Airbus have done. Boeing are much more likely to be influenced by rival Airbus than SWA. The fact that Asia is months away from becoming the biggest aviation market in the world will also be significant.
Maybe, maybe not. I don't know of any plans at boeing (I know some senior managers there) to go to an all-common family. That would be too constraining on future designs if they had to stay backwards-compatible.
And as I can attest from experience when you start pushing the edge of the envelope on commonality it gets hard for the crews to keep up with the differences. About half of the airlines who operate my airplane do not use a common pilot pool for different variants even though it would be legal...this is due to safety concerns. If I ever forget which variant I'm flying, I will bend metal on landing.
Originally Posted by
alvrb211
Similarly, neither PW nor GE are able to produce a family of large turbofans. Rolls Royce produces the only family of large turbofans in the world and this is unlikely to change.
It is unknown how far up the GTF can scale...it might be practically limited to NB or smaller aircraft, but at 15%+ improved fuel efficiency that is enough to justify a separate Mx program at an airline.
GE could do it if they wanted to. It must not be that pressing of a business concern.