rickair7777

Pretty sure they are. Same with all the MAX's except the 10.

OOfff

I’ll bet that they, the people who make those decisions, hereafter collectively referred to as “Boeing,” made the logical (in the absence of foreknowledge of the max) decision to flatten a cowl rather than redesign a wing box and landing gear. I’m not sure that, at the time, making another decision would have been in boeing’s Long-term best interest.

sailingfun

To get proper clearance on the A330-900 engines Airbus moved the engines forward and up from the existing A330. To compensate for increased pitchup tendencies they use software. It’s not just a Boeing concept.

CaptainYoda

Boeing had to concentrate on the B787 for years longer to fix the massive infrastructure screw that it was. The next project was to modernize the 777 which has eaten the lunch of the A330, A340, and A380 series.

That said, Airbus made an excellent decision to upgrade the A320 during a time where Boeing did not have the resources to properly respond.

The win allowed Airbus to expand sales by number if not by actual dollar amount. It really was an interesting move. Pride (we sold more airplane) -vs- money (the government will save us)

Boeing pushed too hard and ended up with the 2 737 Max disasters which played right into the hands of Airbus.

Those accidents, and Boeing's anti-Bombardier attack, which proved absolutely disastrous pushing the C series directly to Airbus have damaged Boeing's credibility as well as the FAA's pulling the USA's reputation along with it.

All that said a A -vs- B conversation can be a lot of things.
The Neo beats the Max dollar for dollar. You would stick with the Max if you have a majority 737 fleet. Honestly, the Max was a band aid solution for a long term problem. The NMA will likely annihilate anything Airbus has to offer, but that is 3-5 years off

OOfff

There’s about a zero percent chance the NMA project is 3-5 years off. It’s complete vaporware.

markinnorthtexa

I wonder what the reasons were that they did not start with a clean slate and a new design in the first place. If that was the safe bet, I wish they would have made that bet instead of the one they made. I also wonder how long it is safe to stick with a design. I have read where we still have the Boeing B-52 airplanes flown by our military and how they still have to use shot gun shells for quick starts when they want to get going fast. It sure seems like our aviation industry is not really leading the world in some respects. I am learning how there used to be more airplane manufacturers here in the US. Perhaps the competition way back when resulted in better and safer designs. Thank you for all of the helpful information and replies.

rickair7777

Because it would have cost something in the rough ballpark of $15-20 Billion MORE to do a clean slate design.

The tube and the wings, and most of the systems still work fine. So they spend the money on things which would increase efficiency by significant margins. Also some safety enhancements such as cockpit tech.

If the design was safe to begin with, it will remain safe forever (unless you change things carelessly, as we have seen).

The only reason to do a clean sheet design is to take advantage of NEW technologies which provide one or more of several advantages...

Lower operating cost (fuel burn, structural weight, mx, crew training, etc).

Lower manufacturing cost.

Enhanced safety, although most customers mostly just want enough safety to comply with certification standards, plus maybe a few operator-specific optionals such as HUD.

The B-52 got a very large lease on life... it will likely fly for about 100 years now. But that's just DoD being financially smart.

The B-52 was very obsolete and not survivable dropping bombs in a contested environment (ie opponent is more capable than low-tech insurgents). But new weapons, targeting, and guidance technology now enables the B-52 to launch standoff weapons from a very great distance. Since it works, is sturdy and reliable, and can carry a huuuuge amount of ordinance compared to other platforms, why not keep it around for standoff work? It can also still safely drop (guided) iron bombs from the stratosphere if we have air superiority.

The designs were most definitely NOT safer back then, LOL. When I was a kid there were a lot fewer airliners, but it was a rare year when several didn't crash. Today's enhanced safety levels derived mostly from technology and increased regulatory sophistication (with some gains on the operational, procedural end, ex CRM).

We are not leading the world quite the way we did back in the day. One of the factors is that government spends less on raw R&D, leaving that more up to industry. Companies are now more responsive to IMMEDIATE shareholder concerns and short-term interests, and are loath to blow money on R&D which does not have a clear ROI, within a relatively short time frame. The aviation world is aware of this, and there is a movement to push for more cutting edge R&D (gov and/or industry funded).

In fact this plays into why both Boeing and Airbus did NOT do clean-sheet new narrowbodies last time around...

The are several key technologies being evaluated by government initiatives (on both sides of the Atlantic) which will likely provide very major (revolutionary) improvements in efficiency and emissions (and maybe mfg cost too). The problem is they are not quite ready for production AND they involve radical changes to airframe and engine design, and possibly engine location.

Since that new tech may be right around the corner, if either mfg blew $20-30B on a new "traditional" airframe, the other might be able to wait five years, and then deploy the new tech, with vastly improved efficiency (like over 50%), utterly blowing their competitor out of the water.

If airline manufacturers are going to spend tens of billions on a new plane, they have to be certain they can sell a lot of them for a long time. The nature of the new tech is that it will require clean-sheet designs, ie cannot be retrofitted.

markinnorthtexa

I wonder whether Boeing still uses TQM, Total Quality Management and CPI, Continuous Process Improvement? I notice that Boeing did receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award a long time ago.
https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2003-11...-Quality-Award

I remember working at Texas Instruments and learning TQM and CPI and competing for quality awards nationally. One example stuck with me, that it might cost $1,000.00 to fix a reliability or safety problem in the design phase of a project, $1,000,000.00 to fix this same problem if it is not discovered until the test phase of a project and it could cost $100,000,000.00 to the company if customers had the product and the company then discovered the problem and had to fix it. If the product being designed was being relied on by people flying high speed military aircraft then lives could be at steak. Needless to say, this got my attention and I was happy to sit through a lot of seemingly endless quality design and test meetings and work through a lot of problems iteratively before the teams I worked with ever allowed something to go into production and get in the hands of military or civilian customers. The cost of product failure is really a lot higher when allowed to happen in production in a customer operating environment. It is astronomical when lives are lost.

Mesabah

The main issue for building a narrowbody is production rate. They have to fly off the assembly line in huge numbers. Right now that means the 737 and A320 are here to stay for at least the next 50 years. However, Boeing is going to be at such a competitive disadvantage in 10 years with the 73, that they are better off exiting the narrowbody business, and only building widebodies, while letting Embraer deal with less than 200 seat aircraft.

rickair7777

Boeing (Airbus) might well have to startup a new, separate production line for a new NB. That line would get things going on the new model, and then the existing 73 (320) lines would transition to the new model as the old one phased out. That's a management project,, not really a show-stopper.

Most of the global airline fleet will HAVE to be drastically more Eco-friendly (if not lower cost) by 2050. That means they need the new tech ready by 2030, for service entry around 2035. What's going to be hard is doing new designs to cover all fleet sizes around the same time... probably going to need .gov help on that. Might be able to drag out the timeline by using bio-fuel (very low carbon footprint), since that can be and is used in current jets at 50% or greater mix with jet A. But the bio-fuel industry needs to grow by several orders of magnitude to provide the needed quantity... actually more than several orders of magnitude.