As someone with very limited knowledge in aircraft development, I'm genuinely curious about what more modern designs would bring to the table compared to the modern 737s, which I assume are heavily updated versions of the original 1960s design?
On a 737 those engines cannot be placed in an ideal position, because that would mean they'd clip into the ground.
The engines are being put above and I think in front of (might be wrong there) where they should be for maximal flight stability.
The original 737 was self-correcting - meaning that if for example the aircraft stalled, the resulting forces would cause the nose to dip down, pulling the plane out of the stall automatically.
The newer versions no longer have that inherent self-correcting ability - and instead use computer software to take over controls and pull the nose down, in case of a stall.
A new airplane design could be made to accommodate much larger, modern engines, while also having the stability and inherent self-correcting ability of the original 737.
But that would require changes to the overall shape and form of the plane - which will require complete recertification. By sticking to the old design, they avoid that.
so the crashes were because the new software was confusing to the pilots and did something unintuitive? and now they want to do another change to how the airplane behaves (interacts with) the pilot?
I believe the updated software now uses both sensors and only acts if both sensors agree (which is actually standard for such systems and should have been done right from the start) - and can be disabled by the pilots, who are now aware of it's function.
But please don't trust my word... I'm no aviation export by a long stretch.
For a more qualified take on this, done by an actual pilot and pilot trainer, I recommend checking out "Mentour Pilot" on Youtube. He's got a number of videos on the 737 Max and the reported problems at Boeing.
Both pilots pulling up on their yokes couldn't override the system?
In this case no, because the way the MCAS system operated was to actuate the stabilizer trim which changes the angle of the entire huge tail plane (the horizontal part of the tail). For the most part the yoke controls the elevator (a smaller flap on the trailing edge of the tail plane), so the pitch control authority available in the yoke movement is not enough to override the adjustment to the tail plane trim MCAS was making.
Once MCAS moved the trim far enough, you couldn't raise the nose with the yoke alone. To correct it, pilots needed to deactivate the trim adjustment motor ("stab trim cut-out" you might have heard about) and manually re-trim the tail plane by folding out a literal crank and spinning a wheel by their legs in the cockpit[1]. The concept of doing this was not new with the MAX (similar procedures around trim system malfunctions existed), but what was new was that MCAS existed in the first place, that it could repeatedly activate if the erroneous inputs were still present, and that it could move the trim quite far before pilots realized what was happening. As I understand it that is pretty different than a traditional runaway trim malfunction for which they'd had training for. I believe that looks more like a stuck switch making a constant movement of the trim until you hit the cut-out. If you cut it back in, either it immediately starts moving again and you know you have a problem or it doesn't and leaves you wondering.
[1](https://www.trbimg.com/img-5d0ba28b/turbine/ct-biz-wp-boeing...)
All the pilots will need to get a type-rating on the new plane type as well, before they are allowed to fly it.
It's not just Boeing's greed. Pretty much the entire industry has been happy to look the other way and enable their nonsense for years, since it meant they wouldn't need to invest extra in training their pilots.
The 737 Max is like double the size of the original 737 - roughly twice the passenger seats, more than twice the weight, roughly 1.5 times the length... How much larger can a plane get, while still keeping the same certification?
Also it's entirely normal for a variant of a vehicle to have significant physical dimension differences. They're considered variants because their [chassis, airframes, hulls, etc] follow the same design and assembly, and because they handle in a similar way; they don't need to basically the same vehicle in a different coat of paint.
I guess a somewhat decent comparison is...Apple makes a type of computer (the MacBook Pro) and releases different variants (and within that, versions) of it. A fully specced out 2023 16-inch MacBook Pro and its entry-level 13-inch variant are both fundamentally the same type of computer even though the former is significantly bigger and beefier. Now, if Apple tried to shove a whole RTX 4090 graphics card into a MacBook Pro's characteristic svelte and relatively vent-less chassis we would say "no, that's stupid. Make a different type of computer if you want to do that". But that doesn't and shouldn't mean that a 16-inch laptop is a different type of laptop from a 13-inch one.
(As an aside, your numbers are a bit off, probably because you're comparing the wrong things. The "original 737" is two planes/variants, not one, and the "737 MAX" is similarly four planes not one)
One of the ways that low-cost regional airlines save money is by standardizing on a single aircraft. For Southwest, that's the 737. Every single pilot, inspector and mechanic in their entire organization only needs to be certified on a single airplane, they only need to have one parts supplier, only one set of tools, etc. - it's enormous cost savings.
Your problem there is . . well, jeez, look around. You're treating completely different products like they're the same thing. Not exactly a new problem, either, but it sure is interesting how it's compounded since the great "financialization" experiment in American capitalism circa 1974, and with a whopper of a sequel post-2008. I am out of my sandbox here, but if I was a betting man, I would put the root cause of this nonsense in this bucket, i.e., lowering apparent risk (by making things look similar) so as to meet requirements of issuing larger financial instruments (bonds, etc).
After the first crashed MAX's FDR data release, I was wondering if there were something massing with the pilots but I wasn't sure. Then the 2nd crash happened and the FDR data looked almost exactly the same, I was almost certain there was some undisclosed mechanism causing nose diving. But as we all knew, Boeing denied such thing until later.
You can see that in the whole Boeing had been SUPER CONFIDENT for sure, and thus I now have no confidence in it at all.
Isn't that the cause of many problems?
I can't imagine much of the original design would be left in the aircraft except for the overall shape of it. I'm guessing (remember now, basically zero aircraft development knowledge) that most tech has been updated to modern equivalents. Engines, controls, computers, ...?
So what would be changed in a complete overhaul of the aircraft?
That's the problem. It was designed for 60s-style boarding via air-stairs on the ground (rather than modern jetways from the terminal) so it's too low down. This requires doing funky things to fit modern, large, energy-efficient engines, starting with those weird flat-bottom cowlings and ending in moving the engines back and changing their angle, which changes the flight characteristics of the plane so much it needed MCAS to compensate.
> So what would be changed in a complete overhaul of the aircraft
The certification, meaning pilots would need re-training since it's no longer the same plane.
The MCAS thing clearly changed the plane so much it should have required re-training anyway, which is why the whole thing is so dumb.
Interesting.
Lots of cases in light aviation where some crashed plane is rebuilt basically from scratch but it's cheaper from regulatory perspective to say it's the same plane, just repaired, ie reuse the tail number.
Designing a completely new plane (which was considered for quite some time) would have taken far too long and Airbus would gave eaten Boeing's lunch in this important segment.
So, Boeing McGivered a solution and updated a 60s airframe for modern use.
To not having to recertify the plane they came up with a software hack, which they initially didn't even document and which far exceeded the capability of its original design.
This[0] is a fantastic read which will leave you with a "how the fuck could they ever do that"? feeling and makes you wonder why nobody went to jail for that
[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-lo...
It seems like the flight charismatics have changed so much that pilot recertification should have been required anyway.
I have worked on eLearning courses for aerospace in the early-mid 00s but have forgotten mostb of what I learned in that domain back then. It was also mostly mechanic/diagnostic interfaces (ECU, etc)
Note that boarding a plane in the middle of the tarmac via bus+stairs is still quite common at many major European airports. Using jet bridges exclusively requires the planes to all be parked in one long line beside a building, which can never be as space-efficient as a 2D-grid parking lot.
How would we know unless they do it? Before iphone was launched someone could have made the same point about Nokia's smartphones. They were heavily updated designs of their massively popular Symbian phones. We simply didn't know what was possible until someone put in the work and innovated and came up with an entirely new design.
For my question the phone-equivalent would be someone asking today in 2024 what is the difference between a Nokia of 2006 and an iPhone of 2024, when only knowing that you can make calls with both of them.
I genuinely didn't know that the modern 737s are so much of a hack to get around regulations and save cost on R&D, and thought they were just good aircraft that were worth iterating on.
I'm sure a few PalmOS owners wondered why they don't make the scroll bars fingerable and add a cell phone ;)
But points to Apple for figuring out you don't need a stylus to write either and you can scroll from anywhere. And for, you know, building a device. I thought of a primitive form of it but it never occured to me to do it.
I've had quite a few non phone PalmOS devices though. I think I'm still keeping a non functional Sony Clie [1] in my nostalgia stash. And maybe a Zire Z22, but I may have thrown that away.
We know it because the Airbus 320NEO which is based on a late 80s design, does not have all the cons the 737 has, and was the reason Boeing scrambled to make the 737Max.