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Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

As the 737 MAX saga unfolds, I've been wondering just why options to modify the landing gear (say: telescoping legs, or placement, or both), is such anathema.

Clearly, moving engine pods alone is not without its risks.

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Ground handling equipment for most of the 737 operators is designed around the low clearance. So if they were to make it sit higher, operators would have to remove a significant amount of equipment.

Also the 737-10 does sit higher: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/boeing-737-max-10-landing-gear...

Also the 737-10 does sit higher: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/boeing-737-max-10-landing-gear...

Watch the video from your link. The landing gear only extend on rotation. When it's on the ground the 737 MAX 10 sits at the same height as every other 737 MAX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4IGl4OizM4

Laziness. This is absolutely a "fuck it, we'll fix it in software" problem. I don't think it would necessarily invalidate the type certificate to change the legs but Boeing has gotten away with doing the bare minimum of structural changes necessary to keep the 737 relevant. Adding fuselage tube sections is far easier than reworking the complex gear systems and moving everything out of the way to make the bays longer (737 has an equipment bay around the nose gear, mains have systems routed around them) so they will do just about anything to avoid that.

It's not laziness, it's cost to cost-sensitive customers who have a viable alternative with Airbus A320 Neo. Boeing actually initially set out to make an entirely new plane. The airliners instead wanted a re-engined 737 to keep type certification so that they didn't have to retrain pilots and could keep new equipment purchases to a minimum.

It's not that Boeing would have been unwilling to build an entirely new plane, their CEO announced that as the plan in 2011, it's that operators would rather they didn't.

And, in retrospect, Boeing would have been WAY ahead financially, not to mention that hundreds of deaths would have been prevented, if they had just offered to subsidise the retraining if they bought the new plane...

In retrospect that may be true. But had MCAS not just had one really stupid flaw, they might have come our way ahead. The plane may have other flaws, even big ones, but could easily have gotten away with them if not for the crashes.

Didn't Ford say something about a faster horse?

I don't really think that anecdote applies cleanly to this circumstance. Had Boeing stuck by their guns and given the customer a new plane despite them wanting a faster horse, what's to say airlines wouldn't choose to buy new airplanes from Airbus instead? If the only option to an airline is to switch planes and retrain pilots, then the relative cost of switching away from Boeing goes down.

Ford was selling a car in a class of it's own, at a price range and volume that was unmatched in the rest of the automotive industry at the time. Boeing is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family

He probably didn't, https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast

As the parent mentioned, that would make it a different plane, which would require the airlines to go through an expensive training process with their pilots. It seems Boeing initially preferred that but was talked out of it by airlines.

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