Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

To add to this & the Jobs interview - an oil industry proverb: a healthy oil company has a geologist in charge, a mature one has an engineer in charge, a declining one has an accountant in charge, and a dying one has a lawyer in charge.

The biggest tell will be just how over budget the development process becomes. Another issue in large companies trying to build something new is the scope creep which leads to committees and then decision by committee.

If the folks leading this effort in Boeing are smart, they will keep the size of the team as small as possible. Maybe they will even hire some people back to lead this effort... assuming they can find them.

My bet is that they will produce something not unlike what they already have in their lineup. It won't be boldly different in any way as technology that has worked elsewhere will just be cargo-culted forward into the "new" design. The biggest thing that will change are the handling characteristics since they won't have to match that of a previous aircraft.

Given that outcome, I (from the peanuts gallery) would design the aircraft to handle in some ideal way using MCAS-like automation to fix any deviation from that ideal, from the beginning. Of course, that's starting to head down the road of a more-Airbus-like design.

Also, passengers are probably going to start waking up to the realities of just how bad the air-travel experience in the US has become compared to so many foreign counterparts. If you want passengers to want your plane, design it without sardines in mind; People don't like being sardines.

> with large organizations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets

It's not just building a product end-to-end. Tim Cook is a supply-chain guy. He knows how to build a product. What he doesn't know how is how to design a new one. This is the reason that all of the "new" stuff that has come out of Apple since Cook took over is actually just riffs on old degrees of freedom: thinner phones. New colors. Different UI skins. The only thing I can think of that Apple has done in the Cook era that was actually new was the Apple Vision Pro. That was really cool, but it was a commercial disaster, the modern equivalent of the Lisa or the NeXT.

Jobs took Lisa and NeXT failures and turned them into the Mac and OS/X. There is no hint that Apple intends to do anything with the Vision Pro, and they've already been scooped by Meta.

It's interesting how that infects every aspect of a company.

I used to work tech support for a mid sized company selling some specialized networking eqipment, late 1990s and early 2000s. Our big deal was we answered the phone immediately, and we were good at what we did, we solved problems, resolved the issue right then and there on the phone.

Customers paid through the nose for our support contracts because it was worth it and they were happy. Happy customers were actually happy customers.

Company grew and was acquired and acquired other companies and so on.

By the end of my time there happy customers was a metric. It really didn't reflect actually happy customers, it was an amalgam of arbitrary stats. We could hit or surpass those numbers, nothing really mattered. Nobody was more happy if the numbers went up, or more sad if the numbers went down. Someone closed a ticket, did it solve anything?, who knows, but it was one more ticket closed!

Management who knew how to build a team, support people who cared, including myself, all just moved on.

Sad stuff really.

Andy Grove, Steve Job's friend (if not mentor), agreed:

"Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. ....abandoning today’s 'commodity' manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry." https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-high-tech-manufacturing-bas...

No one listened to him, certainly not Intel.

This dynamic is a core theme in Asimov's "Foundation." The Empire's technological stagnation is defined by its inability to create new atomic devices. They had the old ones, and they had technicians to maintain them, but the actual knowledge of how to design and construct one from the ground up had been lost to institutional rot. They could patch the old world together, but they couldn't build the new one.

This feels apt to my years at $large_cloud_provider, where the current cohort of folks manage some of the largest web services, but would not be able to develop them from the ground up today. The brain drain from these orgs, the shift to maintenance / KTLO, and the focus on sales/AI "features" rather makes this feel spot on.

But is there room for innovation in the airliner industry anymore? Let's have a thought experiment

If you use the same engines from the same vendors, same aluminum, same carbon fiber, same landing gear. Almost everything just like the others, can you really differentiate anymore? Or if you are a component vendor, can you really innovate that much anymore?

Ie maybe it can be argued it is the correct move, from the board's and investors' point of view. The machine is already pretty close to optimal, and has been since the nineties. Don't change the machine, just milk it. Fire most engineers, move production to the lowest cost non-unionised place, outsource as much as possible to vendors that you compete viciously against each other etc.

> its design was fraught with problems

The 787’s problems were mostly in its supply chain and product-market fit. The actual plane experienced fairly normal growing pains for a clean-sheet design, and has been an exceptional machine since then.

This is eerily similar to the comment on the thread about LLMs that says software teams have to maintain a "theory" or model about how the software works and when they cant, they can no longer function beyond limited forms of maintenance. And in that comment the idea was that LLMs are accelerating this dynamic.

I dont want to stretch the analogy too thin but in this case instead of LLMs being a catalyst, perhaps its a monopoly.

I worked on the 787 but far from the engineering team.

Boeing vowed to never build a plane like that again. They gave the wing design away to Mitsubishi for fucks sake. You never do that.

They were neck deep in the McDonnell Douglas metastasis at the time, and doing an impression of Captain Ahab in trying to union bust in Seattle by fucking off to South Carolina. Boeing customers would figure out which plane numbers were produced in SC and avoid purchasing them.

The thing about Boeing though is if you think the 737 team learns anything from the 747 team you’d be mostly wrong. Each airplane design builds up a new company inside Boeing to design that plane. They have their own meetings with each other and vendors. You’ll get some staff migration between the projects but if I saw any I didn’t notice. Toward the end during ramp down I’m sure some people moved onto the various -8 and -9 projects that were trying to stick composite wings onto existing lines.

I was asked if I was interested in porting my software to the C-17, after they figured out how to turn it into a bomber. I said fuck no, and that was the last I heard about it. Not that our code was particularly opaque. Some of the cleanest code I’ve ever done (knowing it would be maintained by someone else for as much as 30 years).

> It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009, and its design was fraught with problems.

I've listened to a fair number of podcasts about this, and consensus seemed to be they need to start designing a new airplane now, because if they wait as long as they'd previously been indicating, they'd have lost too much of their "new airplane design" experience.

Here's a link to the same video but without the awful music inserted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

> why should the company keep them around?

Smart companies should know that a large chunk of their value chain is knowledge work. For airplanes the danger of suddenly seeing a Boink 212 appearing on the market is probably quite low, but there certainly is engineering work to be done on planes, even if some of it won't see implementation for a long time.

But long time strategy is probably not even a term in some companies.

Well, if I was CEO of Boeing, first day I'd basically be Microsoft and move heaven and earth getting the Dave Cutler of aviation (I have no idea who that is). He's in charge and if you don't like it you come to me.

Second problem are the MBA's. I don't have a solution for that, other than keep them far away from Cutler's division.

Honestly, the technical part is "easy"; it's the day to day politics that gets in the way when what is needed is longterm thinking. Take for example when NYC hired Andy Byford and Cuomo The Child couldn't stand not being in the spotlight. Shame.

You forget, they also clean-sheet designed the starliner starting in 2014 and that project... also happens to exactly prove your point. (at least 2B over budget, and 8 years after it's original operational target of 2017, has yet to fly a fully successful mission)

you're trying hard to paint a picture of fail, but your evidence doesn't stack up

>It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009

2003 to 2009 is an incredibly short time line for a revolutionary new design (the heavy use of composites) The A350 developed in response was much less ambitious effort and took longer. The A380 also took a long time to plan and execute. Aircraft generations last at least a decade, and new designs every 15 years-ish is not a crazy ballpark

>and its design was fraught with problems

A380 had plenty of problems, hence the delays

the problems with the 737MAX stemmed from Boeing trying to push the low-wing design of the older 737 through one more generation to avoid a complete redesign, to avoid the kind of cash flow pinch and never-paid-back development that Airbus suffered with the A380 (which was why they tried the "evolutionary" redesign on the cheap that led to the A350)

>Before then was the 777 in the early 90s

777 was a revolutionary approach to developing a plane that led to its incredible success which continues through today (the clever idea they had? asking airlines what they wanted) Airbus has also chosen paths that have been quite successful, their "same cockpit" being one of them. 777 and Airbus's planes from that time all had very long commercial lives

>everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets

I don't think anybody has ever designed a jetliner end to end, as piston planes crossed that hurdle earlier.

>if ... a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company

where else are aerospace engineers going to work? I'm not saying there's a surplus but with defense, aviation is a very big industry, and most any engineer would like to work on greenfield designs for marquis products.

shoot from the hip copycat Jobs would find no jobs in aerospace. Different types of people have different personalities. Aircraft design is tight tolerance and exacting, and anybody who does it is going to be comfortable working in a that type of environment, lots of check, test, recheck, paperwork, etc.

Just ask ChatGPT how to design an airplane, easy.

>> There's a phenomena that ofter occurs with large organizations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets.

A coworker from China once told me (and I can see it) everything in China is considered ephemeral. Companies in the US want to invest capital to generate ROI and recurring revenue (or monetize/enshittify everything) or one could say be lazy. Even big manufacturers want to invest in a plant and then enjoy the profits from ongoing production (Boeing doesn't even want to do production). This is why China has been booming, everything is temporary so everyone scrambles and is willing to take on smaller more short term production because nothing is forever. Well, that and they have the capacity since we gave it up.

> Before then was the 777 in the early 90s (pre-McDonnell takeover), and the 757/767 in the early 80s

All of which are generally regarded as great aircraft by the people who fly them.

Boeing in particular has been about "maximizing shareholder value" to detrimental levels for decades now. Absolutely pushing out its most experienced (and expensive) employees in favor of less skilled and experienced staff often with an ageist bent. Beyond this has been a cultural shift and ever expanding increase to woke HR policies and practices to levels that are more harmful than good.

I should note that I'm entirely in favor of diversity of background and thought, not to mention various educational backgrounds. That said, actually having "unofficial" policies against promoting people of a certain race and gender combination (no white men hired or advancing in management, especially old white men) is as problematic as any other racial/gender/ageist bigotry.

I don't work for Boeing as I don't have a formal education that prevents me from ever being considered. I do know several people that do. Opinions are my own and not that of my employer or anyone else.

A big advantage for this kind of project today is the fact that the entire plane can be modeled in CAD with every single part verified to fit and work. The US Air Force claims this was heavily used for the B-21 and greatly accelerated development.

Does this also apply to Apollo?

Microsoft seems to do ok re-inventing itself, maybe through internal conflict and cage fights.

I wonder who the IBM/Xerox of today is? Amazon? Facebook?

Also people retire out. A new product every 15-20 years leads to a lot of aging out

What problems were there with the 787? IIRC it was the first major composite airliner and they had the advantage of hoovering up all the unemployed post Berlin Wall cream of the crop Soviet aerodynamicists to work on it for them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/26/business/boeing-s-russian...

The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009

That seems very quick to design a whole jumbo jet. I know they're not starting from scratch, but how long does something like that typically take?

One of the reasons the 787 was fraught with problems is because it was peak decision-making by finance and accounting people. Specifically, Boeing outsourced everything for the 787s. There were layers of subcontractors upon subcontractors to produce the different parts because, you know, outsourcing was "cheaper" or "more efficient". So of course the logistics pipeline is hellishly complicated.

All because Boeing just didn't want to employ people directly who can build up expertise.

> Cessna 172s flying into international airports have to fly their landing approach way faster than usual for that type of plane because _everybody_ flies approaches at 747 speeds.

This isn't even close to true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_approach_category.

Cessnas approach at less than half the speed of 747s. The safe maximum cruising speed is 20-30 kts short of a 747 approach speed. You would have to be willing to risk your airplane and your life to get a Cessna up to the approach speed of a 747.

My experience landing Cessnas and other light aircraft at airfields where they land the big boys (including busy international ones) is that you approach and land at the speeds that the aircraft you are flying is designed for (which, btw, ATC and the FAA don’t give two shits if you are an international airport, the rules are the same everywhere in the US. I am licensed and have flown in other countries, and it varies ever so slightly, but not in the direction you are implying). I have had controllers ask me to keep speed up for spacing, but they aren't expecting miracles, they know that you simply can't get a Cessna to go above a certain speed.

The rest of your comment also has some dubious claims. I suspect that the top speed was set just below mach 1, not because Boeing had no engineering knowledge about supersonic flight, but because fuel efficiency, and a host of other factors that make supersonic flight difficult. As a counter to that assertion I would point out that Boeing had a supersonic engineering team that started in 1952. They even designed a supersonic airliner that was never built in the 1960s. Hard to believe that they chose not to make the 747 supersonic because they lacked the experience to design an SST while they simultaneously had an SST design and supersonic research team before the 747 was conceived.

The 747 was a groundbreaking airplane, but it wasn't all of the things being claimed here.

To be fair, they did not operate in today’s world. The airlines they sold to back then before deregulation had government-guaranteed profits and so were much less focused on cost cutting than in today’s deregulated environment.

For decades after deregulation the total net profit of all airlines was negative. (Might still be, I’m not sure.) The industry got really cost competitive, and so the planes they purchased had to as well.

> I have a book here somewhere

You can't just say that, mention a bunch of interesting things, and not tell me the name of the book...

> That is not today's Boeing.

How do you know they don't take all this into account when designing their planes?

That's because Boeing is primarily a defense contractor these days.

> And it's all because the Southwest CEO wanted to have only one kind of airplane. That's the cause of the 737 MAX.

Interesting how in the eyes of Joe Public, Southwest had nothing to do with it. Wonder if the Southwest board figures their cynical calculation worked out well enough to try again?

i dont know anything about how these companies are run, but couldnt it simply be their engineers were busy working on other projects?

i assume there is a limited talent pool of the required people

I read "Airframe" by Michael Crichton probably twenty years ago, and it was around ten years old at that time. I remember that that book talked about how the planes were unstable by design and required software to maintain proper flight characteristics, and that this was so because it was more efficient. The book is fiction, but I doubt it was far off the mark at the time. I suspect that there is no going back from this state of things, and so if there must be software, it should be good software.

The 737 is a clusterfuck because the giant engines throw off the physics of the plane both inertially and aerodynamically.

It’s easier to make a turbofan more efficient by making it bigger. But power density also tends to go up with new models, so there’s at least a chance that there’s a smaller, lighter engine with the same thrust and fuel economy out there, allowing them to improve (restore) the physics of the aircraft.

It'd be a new airframe and not an elongation of an elongation of an existing one... So we might be lucky this time.

The only instability most comercial planes have is the so called Dutch roll caused by swept wings and is compensated by the yaw damper (no sw needed)

> I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence

I get, but if everyone does that, Boeing does and we're left with a monopoly. Is that better? Will you feel safer flying on a COMAC?

People blame Boeing for the 737 MAX. They were elbows deep in a clean sheet design. Yeah, they shouldn’t have built the plane but the demand was made by Southwest and American who both said straight up if you don’t make a new 737, we’re switching to Airbus.

> New activist ownership has pushed to diversify frames and phase out reliance on the 737 frame which is significantly more inefficient than modern frames.

Looks like a case of "broken clock is right twice per day"

The A220 is an absolute treat. Can't put exactly my finger on why, but it just feels right in size, noise, the little screens at the top.

Flown it once or twice with AirBaltic, and would love to take it again.

The "Neo series" are re-engined A320 series (neo = New Engine Option) and has nothing to do with the A220.

The A220 is unrelated to the Neo. The Neos are re-engining of the 320 and 330 series (neo stands for "new engine option"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family

And while a plane with good bones, the A220 has not been all positives for Airbus: AFAIK they still loses money on the thing, ramping up has been hell as it's not part of any of Airbus's existing lines of procurement, and it's contributed to the already awkward 319neo being DOA.

Replacing the 737 MAX with a competitor to the A220? Something does not make sense.

The A220 series' maximum capacity is basically the 737 MAX series' minimum capacity.

The timing may be right. The A220 is suffering from lousy engines from their supplier. Lots of engine turnover, lots of maintenance needed. Delta just made a huge commit to the A220 made in Mobile to replace their 717 fleet.

Lets hope Boeing can do it right this time.

Boeing's only answer to the A220 was to get the US administration to impose a 220% import tarif on it. It didn't even compete with Boeing models. Fuck Boeing.

boeing will never die as long as the government wants to have a domestic passenger airline manufacturer. and they pretty clearly do want that.

it'll take more than financial losses to kill boeing.

The US will bail out Boeing, if necessary.

There are only two¹ major manufacturers of commercial airliners: one in the US and one in the EU. Both are essentially state backed. Both blocs want to have their own manufacturer, for strategic reasons, and they won't let it go under.

1. There will probably be three in a few years, since China is building up Comac.

The AoA failure logic does not allow for manual reversion of the master/monitoring FCC. It still requires cross-checking sides in the event of an AOA DISAGREE annunciation. But since the update, MCAS is disabled in this scenario. As far as the FMC, the relationship between AoA vanes, flight control computers and CMD A/B is not configurable. But the non-failed autopilot channel can be selected.

You're not alone, but I find it interesting that not too long ago[0] there was a common sentiment of "if it's not Boeing, I'm not going". I heard that often after the Air France 447 crash [1]

[0]OK, I guess 2009 is not as recent as I remember...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

Is the MAX really using a 286 CPU? Why would they pick that for a plane launched in 2014. I get that it's based on the 737 Next Gen, but they just opted to not update the electronics?

So given that both the basic recipe for the 737 and A320 are pretty old by now, how much "better" could a new clean sheet narrowbody realistically be, given recent in aircraft design?

And how much better would it _need_ to be, in order for large 737 operators to be convinced to place their next order for the new 7007? (yes, like nVidia, I trust they'll just add a number and start over when they run out of numbers).

They already did that, it’s called the 757 and nobody bought it. Maybe we’ll get a 757 MAX with MCAS to make it type compatible with the 737.

Airbus's suppliers already have a hard time keeping up with airbus right now. Why would they add a concurrent that depends on the exact same supply chain, when they have taken delivery engagements for the next decade.

Unless the price is truly astronomical ,but then it's not worth it for Boeing anyway.

And that's before touching reputational damage that come from building your concurrent's plane because you couldn't design your own.

China is very good at subsidising development like this. Other commenters are rightly pointing out that they cannot currently compete with Boeing. But if you look at the way the chinese approached car manufacturing, 20 years ago, I wouldnt have even ridden in one, these days they are honestly fantastic. Its because they got the chance to make those really bad cars, that they were able to improve to where they are today. 20 years from now, its possible that the gap closes to the point that Boeing is displaced from everywhere but the US.

Biggest issue I can see is that the US will try and weaponise national security against them. Much like how Cisco and Juniper fought to have Huawei and friends blacklisted in most western countries. Just as they become competitive, Boeing and Airbus might start screaming that the chinese planes have communist killswitches and that planes will fall out of the sky if theres a war with China.

COMAC can only compete (geopolical drama aside) if engine efficiency improves or fuel prices decreases. TLDR every bit of COMAC can be modern / tier1 (and most of it is), but at current aviation fuel prices, 10-15% efficiency gap in engines will save more money on fuel over airframe lifetime. C919 is basically a 2025 narrow with a 2015 engine, but that old engine alone makes it not economically viable in most markets AT current aviation fuel prices. COMAC makes a lot of sense for PRC economically, not giving a cent to boeing, can build out COMAC specific support across country easily, but it's still commercially not well priced.

The caveate being COMAC is only expensive / has limited room to discount because it uses a lot of western components (for easy regulation/certification only). If PRC moves to a full soveign civil aviation stack, it would probably be very possible to price COMAC competitively, but that's more a medium/long term project. That's probably how it goes the way things are gonig, US probably not going to even certify/liimt where PRC planes can land to kneecap COMAC. PRC + RU can probably do some shenanigans like prevent US planes from flying over their airspace in retaliation and then it's a matter of how much divertion (extra fuel+travel costs) impact bottom line. At the end of the day geopolitics will determine how viable civil aviation projects are.

The C919 isn’t even competitive with where Boeing was 20 or 30 years ago.

Looking forward to what AI-generated flight control software can do!

737 MAX Ultra Plus Alpha?

    Boeing 737 MAX+
    Boeing 737 MAX+ Xtreme
    ...
    Profit!

The article just mentions "Boeing plane" with no details. Will it fly?

https://archive.ph/Cqgtc

You're absolutely right! Unfortunately, the MAX replacement will have strict weekly limits on how many hours it can be flown fully loaded - and most airlines will hit the weekly limit after just a couple flights.

Don't think it would have sold - behind the airbus neos on fuel efficiency. Hence the janky mcas solution to make the reengine work

Cancelled?

No, they need a different landing gear to make room for bigger engines. Larger diameter engines are needed for better fuel efficiency. Fly by wire is nice, but fuel economy is more important.