Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

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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 And the E-Jet itself has been superseded by the E2-Jet and A220.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.

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.

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.

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.

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