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Comment by CodeSheikh | Hacker News Reader

Why don't they just kill the 737 MAX program and start on another aircraft? As a consumer it will build confidence and trust in me.

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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.

You don't 'just kill' a program with ~500B$ worth of orders with no alternative offering in sight.

Because it will take on the order of 10 years. What are the 737 customers going to fly in the mean time? Keeping old airplanes flying longer isn't exactly increasing security either. And there is no indication so far, that a 737 MAX with a fixed MCAS isn't safe.

Don't get me wrong: I think Boeing should have created a true 737 successor long ago and should do ASAP. But until it is done, there is a need for a current 737. And certainly, you don't want them to cut corners when developing the 737 successor...

> And there is no indication so far, that a 737 MAX with a fixed MCAS isn't safe.

I don't think that's quite true. There's been a large swathe of other problems [0] involved in the production.

Broken or damaged parts, engine shutdowns and faulty hydraulics are just some of the concerns that Boeing seemed to have glossed over.

There has to be a reason that Boeing was willing to go so far as halt production [1] to reassess the plane, and that won't be just one flaw.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/boeing-737-max-w...

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-weighs-cutting-or-haltin...

They're halting production because they can't deliver the planes.

They don't have any internal controls to halt production for safety reasons, that much should be evident by now.

There are manufacturing lines which aren't the MAX.

The 737 NG remains in production.

> And there is no indication so far, that a 737 MAX with a fixed MCAS isn't safe.

At this point, that plane has no goodwill whatsoever left to it. The onus is on it proving that it's safe, not on its critics proving it's unsafe, because the only sensible assumption is that it's not safe and that Boeing does not and ill not self-regulate (big duh).

> I think Boeing should have created a true 737 successor long ago and should do ASAP

They announced that back in 2014, and probably several times beforehand.

Issue is demand has seen Boeing push the 737 into 757 territory (years after the 757 got cancelled), it's not that they haven't created a 737 successor it's that their customers don't want a 737 successor, they want 737s so they can just buy the frames and put existing crew on the new plane without retraining.

That's what the 737 MAX is about, and why it's broken. It's the 4th generation of 737 (original, Classic, Next Generation) and the frame can't take it anymore, but 737s is what e.g. Southwest want, because that's literally the only thing they fly.

It's more about terror of the A320 isn't it?

The 737 Max cost $3bn to develop and it's an iteration of an existing design. There's no "just" about developing an entirely new plane design from scratch.

When Airbus released the A320neo , Boeing needed to get a comparable plane out ASAP or else cede several (tens of even) thousands of plane sales to Airbus over the next decade. There wasn't the time to design a whole new plane, so they pushed the design of the 1960s era 373 as far as they could go. The details of the "risky" changes to accommodate the larger engines (that significantly changed the planes aerodynamic profile) and attempts to compensate for that with MCAS are already documented elsewhere.

Keep in mind, there is a gold rush for new airlines right now. Africa/India/Asia are developing and are requiring thousands of planes to fill the demand (it's no coincidence Africa and Asia is where these new planes ended up crashing). If Airbus gobbled them up, they'd likely be airbus customers forever, as mixing plane types is more expensive for airlines.

It would bankrupt the company and put them years behind Airbus.

Which would be a hell of an example of technologcial debt coming back to bite.

Boeing should have bitten the bullet on new designs long ago. They failed in this.

Some actions have consequences which don't materialise for years, or decades, or centuries.

Which is a principle weakness of the notion of market economics. The booked profits of the past 20+ years of the firm deserve restating.

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