Boeing needs to get real: the 737 MAX should probably be scrapped | Hacker News Reader

Boeing needs to get real: the 737 MAX should probably be scrapped

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51 pointsbookofjoe45 comments

More fundamentally they ought to go back in time and change it so instead of making the 787 they made a 737 replacement.

The trouble w/ the 737 MAX is not just that it is dangerous but it is inferior in every other way. It's deafeningly loud in the cabin and for people on the ground and even louder in the cockpit. The 737 needs more runway than other airliners that have 4x the passengers: when you read that "airliners can't take off in Arizona because temperatures are too high" it really is "737s can't take off..."

If you rode in one of these

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_family

you'd learn that "widebody comfort in a regional airliner" isn't just a marketing slogan but something you can experience. The reason why your neck locks up just thinking about riding in a 737 is that the 737 has a human-hostile circular cross section that was the best they could do in 1967 but even a much smaller 2004 airliner feels huge on the inside in comparison... And the E-Jet itself has been superseded by the E2-Jet and A220. In a better world somebody would start a new airline based on the Southwest playbook that entirely uses modern jets and once you tried it you'd have a very hard time ever flying in a 737 or A320 ever again.

People don't realize what a technological backwater domestic aviation has become: instead of upgrading technology they keep making excuses for deficiencies like https://www.alpa.org/resources/aircraft-operations-radar-alt... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/10/1... because there is so much regulatory capture. As it is Boeing probably imagines it is going to be making a starship for NASA in 2070 but to still keep making the 737.

Wouldn’t Southwest have been as opposed 20 years ago to a 737 replacement that required a new type certificate as they were when Boeing was marketing the Max?

As I understand it, their insistence that their pilots be able to fly a new model with only a limited refresher course was one of the major factors that prevented Boeing from launching a clean sheet design.

Edit: Not meaning to blame this debacle on Southwest (I think American also took a similarly hard line) and certainly not meaning to absolve Boeing from many, many poor decisions. But I think it’s fairly easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that of course Boeing should have pursued a real 737 replacement, and I’m not sure that the commercial factors that weighed against that would have been diminished regardless of timeline.

At the end of the say, Southwest doesn't really have an alternative. If Boeing comes out with a next generation 737 replacement, that is significantly more fuel effizient and no new version of the 737, then what is Southwest gone do? Never upgrade their planes?

Go from all Boeing to all Airbus? Even when the 737 replacement has better economics then the A320?

If Boeing were smart they would have bought the C-Series, and added the C-500 model quickly. That would have been the perfect plane to get all the 737 people to switch. Instead Boeing handed those planes to Airbus, and now Airbus has 2 planes better then the 737 Aax.

Southwest has had a lot of pull with Boeing for a long time. It was a fight to get them to accept the glass cockpit in the 737NG.

Sometimes the customer is the worst person to spec out what a new product should be. Great engineering will build a product that draws the customer in and wants to buy because it's better in all the ways the customer didn't realize they wanted.

I disagree. The 787 has sold 1800 units already, and that for a wide-body, that is much more profitable. They will sell far more then that. Its in a segment where they beat Airbus. Only recently with the 330 NEO is Airbus even close to competitive.

The 787 was a great strategic move. The execution there was the problem, but despite that, it was the right choice.

> based on the Southwest playbook

Airbaltic seems to be all A220 by now.

It's so weird to me to separate strategic choices from execution. If you haven't a clue what a system can or cannot pull off, you cannot produce sound strategies for it.

And its not weird to separate strategic choice from execution. I am arguing against somebody that said the strategic choice should have been to develop 737 successor instead of 787. That's just strategy. They could have the same kind of production issues and execution issues in that plane as well.

The 787 has fantastic product market fit, has good new technology in it and will be a cornerstone for Boeing for decades. The issues with 787 are production, not understanding what it can do. But despite those production issues, orders keep coming in.

I meant the production system of Boeing. How can you say it was the right choice if they proved incapable of delivering it? Someone making strategic choices ought to know what the realities on the ground are. Otherwise it is meaningless to talk about correctness of strategy.

Again. Had the picked another product the would have had many of the same issue. Are you arguing they should have done nothing?

Even with the production issues, they still had a peak production rate of 150 planes.

And those issues arent limiting sales very much.

So even with the production issues it was the right choice.

The program just isnt quite as profitable as hoped. Still the right strategy.

The strategy of continuing with the 737 into the 2020s has causes numerous avoidable fatalities. The original point stands, it was a strategical failure. As OP comment said, they should have scrapped that platform. Rivals with more modern jets have superior products. You try to make a point it is the right strategy but execution was lacking. I respectfully disagree. The strategy of milking the obsolete platform was a bad choice.

> strategy of continuing with the 737 into the 2020s has causes numerous avoidable fatalities

No that's not the fundamental reason. The strategy of continuing with the 737 could have been done in a save way. There is nothing inherent in the 737 that makes it fundamentally unsafe.

> You try to make a point it is the right strategy but execution was lacking. I respectfully disagree.

You haven't actually made the point at all. With 787 the execution was flawed. With 737 MAX the execution was even more flawed. You have only provided other examples of flawed execution.

That doesn't prove the strategy was wrong.

Doing the 787 also doesn't inherently mean you can't replace the 737. Boeing had enough money to do both as they have done before.

Saying Boeing should have done some other strategy would likely also have resulted in flawed execution of some kind.

Without the 787, they might have had to do a 767 MAX. And that 767 MAX could have also crashed if the execution was flawed.

All you are doing is imagining a different strategy and then asserting that everything would have been amazing if that strategy had been followed.

All I'm doing is saying the strategy of milking an obsolete platform was a poor strategy. Disagree all you want but don't make a strawman to debate against and pretend that it is me.

> “execution there was the problem”

Thoughts on this devil’s advocate perspective? “Don’t design/propose what your org can’t build.”

Ok. Doing nothing would have been worse. And the can build it, they peaked at 150 a year. Having some delay and some production issues isnt that suprising for project of that scale.

Putting my own devils advoacte "Should you never design something new because you cant prove production is gone be easy"

> More fundamentally they ought to go back in time and change it so instead of making the 787 they made a 737 replacement.

They did. It was called the 757. But Boeing killed it off about 5-10 years too early.

This isn't assigning blame but:

James McNerny - CEO of Boeing from 2005-2015:

- As Boeing's first CEO without a background in aviation, he made the decision to upgrade the 737 series to 737 MAX instead of developing a new model

- Compensation in 2007: $12,904,478

- Compensation in 2009: $13,705,435

- Compensation in 2014: $29,000,000

Dennis Muilenburg - CEO of Boeing from 2015-2019:

- Compensation in 2018: $23,400,000

- Compensation for being fired in 2020: $62,000,000

- Average employee salary in 2018 was $126,991. This might be very skewed by executive salaries but the CEO made ~184x more than the average employee.

Something is wrong here.

No you’re absolutely right this is a huge problem. Why are C suites immune to performance reviews? It’s infuriating.

Typically the board is supposed to do that in a startup setting, not sure how that would go down at a large company

I think part of the problem, is if the board fires the CEO for doing a bad job, that suggests the board did a bad job in hiring them in the first place. So it is in the personal self-interest of board members to try to play down the CEO's mistakes, to save their own face.

Whereas, a lower-level manager – if you hire 10 people to work for you, and one of them turns out to be a bad hire, people may think you still made a good decision with the other 9. Whereas, the board only really has one hiring decision to make – the CEO – so if they make a bad decision there, they don't have anyone else to point to.

For smaller firms and startups this is less of an issue, because even if the CEO turns out to be a disaster, likely few will ever hear of it–so it has less potential negative impact on board member's individual reputations. Whereas, for megacorps, if a CEO makes a mess, everybody hears about it, and board members are more likely to be asked about it when being considered for future board positions.

Would delaying executive compensation/bonuses multiple years help mitigate these bone-headed decisions that seemingly only happen when everyone has a short time preference, leaving someone else holding the bag? (I'm genuinely curious.)

That's kind of the idea behind deferred compensation, usually in the form of stock grants (or stock options). But people are often critical of that as well, because it prioritizes boosting the stock price above all else, and of course when all the deferred comp does eventually get paid out, people get quite upset hearing about a 9-digit payday, even if it was the sum of a decade's withheld earnings.

I wonder why boards don’t give CEO’s a contract in which their compensation can be retroactively clawed back if it is later decided that decisions the CEO made cost the company a great deal of money. Of course lawyers would likely be involved to determine this precisely.

In some ways, this would justify the outrageous compensation packages due to the risk implicitly involved. And, it seems to me it would align incentives a little bit better between CEOs and shareholders.

Because they're all on each other's boards. There's no incentive to do otherwise. And all they need to do is cater to wall street to maintain their positions because the vast majority of their shares are tied up in 401k funds insulating them from any oversight.

Put differently, you wonder why being able to claw back compensation isn't a business advantage. Why it isn't something that a few companies have tried and then others emulated because of the visible success.

Shrug.

Personally, I suspect that boards are focusing on business outcome, think that hiring great negotiators as executives helps with business outcome, and accept that great negotiators will negotiate great terms for themselves against the company.

This article is clearly written by somebody who doesn't really understand the subject... From the article -

> Boeing should arguably design a new narrow-body plane again based on the 737 Next Generation with higher efficiency and larger engines.

That is exactly what the 737 MAX is already. And that was a lot of the problem...

There are over 1000 of them in service

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-airlines/

The OP post gets a bit ranty or biased at times, especially at the end

Manufacturers in other areas regularly have to recall tens of millions of units. I see no reason this should be different.

Auto recalls involve bringing cars in to have the problematic bits fixed. Grounding planes for inspection and repairs seems like a close analogue to that.

Yeah, but in this case, they intentionally understaffed / underpaid the people doing the assembly, and the design is fundamentally flawed.

In practice, if a car recall required retorquing every bolt, the manufacturer would probably just declare them totaled instead of doing the repairs. All recently built Boeings require that level of recall. (737s, Max or not, military models, etc have all been having these issues due to willful manufacturing negligence that Boeing initiated 5-10 years ago)

With the MAX, they also probably should change the wing and engine geometry and replace the control electronics while they’re at it.

Scrapping the existing ones and discontinuing the line is looking more and more reasonable over time.

That’s patently absurd… Yes, let’s scrap 1000 new aircraft that cost $60m or so each instead of checking the tightness of bolts…

You're assuming that the planes can be disassembled and put back together, and that the assembly line didn't screw up harder to fix things. They checked the doors and tail wing for loose bolts, and one airline reported loose parts in the tail wing. Some of the bolts and parts are more important than a door plug. What do you with all the load bearing parts that have been flying with a few missing bolts? X-Ray them to check for microscopic stress lines?

Also, what's the failure rate of a plane that's been taken apart and put back together in the field (including things outside of routine maintenance)? I'm guessing it's closer to the end of life reliability than beginning of life reliability.

The way things are trending, at some point the depreciation, repair costs, cancelled flights and increased probability of loss of life will exceed $60M per plane. It's got to be in the millions already. Low tens of millions wouldn't surprise me.

> In practice, if a car recall required retorquing every bolt, the manufacturer would probably just declare them totaled instead of doing the repairs.

Bear in mind that a 737 seats ~150 people and average car occupancy is somewhere around 1.5, so it's more like the value of 100 cars compared to the increased complexity of the checks.

There are also very significant levels of inspection required as standard (something like 10 000 hours per year minimum) on an airliner compared to a personal vehicle (not including normal pre-flight checks). Even divided by 100 using the same maths as above, a car does not undergo anything LIKE 100 hours of inspection per year. Depending on where you live, you might have your car at the mechanics for a day every year or two to do a roadworthiness inspection.

That said, I agree, it does seem like there are quite a lot of quality issues with these planes.

If I were an airline executive who was looking to order new aircraft, the discount I'd need from Boeing would need to be pretty significant - it will have to more than offset the loss from customers who won't fly 737 MAX at any price.

The question for Boeing is probably going to come down to whether they would rather be selling aircraft at a loss, or go for a long period of time without a product in important segments.

They have over 6,000 firm orders so it’s very unlikely they’ll be selling for a loss…

Discussions on similar submissions:

Boeing needs to get real: the 737 MAX should probably be scrapped https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38989894 (January 14, 2024 — 20 points, 8 comments)

One crash on U.S. soil and Boeing will never be the same again.

Realistically investor memory has a horizon measured in months. So long as there isn't an immediate threat to business continuity (and thus their stock listing) they will be fine. Odd as it sounds, one crashing plane isn't going to be enough to doom them, not even two or three.

Investors may have the memory of a goldfish but two or three crashes would surely rile up the media and end users enough to make a huge dent. Competitors and savvy investors might precipitate a sharp fall in stock price.

People value their own life a lot and it takes little to get a sizable portion of flyers to boycott the planes if there were crashes and loss of life. The airlines might decide it's better to sue boeing at that point.

Everything above is a speculation but I have a hard time imagining companies not being ruined after multiple airline crashes.

Unfortunately Boeing has been allowed to grow Too Big To Fail. They won't be allowed to die as they make up a significant portion of the Defense Industrial Base. Since stock buybacks are legal again, they can artificially maintain its price so long as they can raise the capital to do so. Worst case for them, the affected fleets get grounded and airlines stop buying those models. Plenty will still buy Boeing because the alternative is waiting forever for an Airbus, or being beholden to a single manufacturer. There are up and coming competitors like Embraer, but they cannot ramp up production fast enough to strangle Boeing. If Boeing dies it will be a zombie walk into oblivion. It is as you said, speculation.

What I find disappointing is that media outlets have failed to jump on the fact that, right before all the latest shoddiness was discovered, Boeing requested a safety exemption for another problem with these planes: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

This is a mischaracterization so I'm glad our media isn't parroting your comment

Except you couldn't say HOW it's a mischaracterization.

It's not another problem with these planes, they are requesting the same exception from some more modern regulations for the -700 series that the FAA gave to the other two series in production now. The 737 max is not a design from scratch... so it makes sense it doesn't comply with some new regulation. The pilot union for southwest has already said they'd prefer if Boeing didn't have to redesign the cockpit for some of the variants. (problaby will lead to more confusion for pilots swtiching between max types

Also the media has covered it a ton! Google it!!

You're simply confirming what I said, including the fact that the previous iterations suffer from the same defect and should be pulled from service.

And nobody is demanding that Boeing redesign the cockpit. This entire fiasco was to cover up an "upward-pitching tendency" under power, which ANY competent pilot could easily account for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com