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0 pointsPaulHoule6y ago0 comments

Yes, but the airline industry has been doing a great job for the most part on both safety and economics.

The A320 costs about what the 737 costs and it has a flight envelope protection system with much better safety. It's had problems in the past that Airbus has learned from and that Boeing has applied to their newer airliners, but that Boeing got amnesia for when it came to the legacy 737.

(The A320 fly-by-wire also improves fuel efficiency, lowers maintenance costs, rides out turbulence to improve comfort, etc.)

Also the lack of safety has not saved anybody any money. I think now Boeing is saying they've lost $8 billion because of the MAX problems, and if they took that plus what they spent to make the MAX they could have been a clean sheet replacement for the 737.

People are so used to the 737 that they don't realize what a backwards airplane it is. Every other airliner from every manufacturer makes some claim that it is comfortable on their official web page. The 737 doesn't because it is the least comfortable airliner (and thus is the baseline everything is compared to.) The 737 is loud for passengers, pilots, and people on the ground. The A220 and E190 are smaller planes that are much more comfortable because they are designed around the human body as opposed to 1960's aeronautics. Compared to a clean sheet design, the 737 wastes fuel, causes excess global warming, has a higher seat-mile cost, and it makes everybody miserable while doing so.

The 737 is what secular stagnation looks like.

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tastygreenapple6y ago· 2 in thread

You're missing some important details.

The A320 and 737 have similar sticker prices, but it's not clear if one is cheaper to buy than the other because the prices paid for planes tend to be around half of the sticker price but the real prices aren't public.

The A320 is around 10k lbs heavier than the 737 and the A320 series burns more fuel per passenger mile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft). The A321 NEO is nearer the efficiency of the Boeing 737-900 than than the 737 MAX 10.

The passenger comfort of the 'human focused' designs often comes at the cost of fuel efficiency.

You're right that the 737 is loud and an old design. I don't dispute that Boeing messed up their one job (making safe planes) but to call the 737 secular stagnation when the newest version is nearly three times as efficient (in terms of fuel burned to move a passenger one miles) as the original 737 misunderstands "stagnation".

PaulHouleOP6y ago

Up to a point the 737 got better, but the same things that made it get better (longer range) made it get worse (worse comfort)

An engineering prof I worked with years ago said that the 737 NG was already long in the tooth

https://www.newsweek.com/boeings-737-airplane-prone-problems...

and has a great quote from Tony: "Boeing are (sic.) stuck with a design that they want to fly forever."

tastygreenapple6y ago

The second gen 737 was long in the tooth. IIRC, the 737 NG has a much better wing than it needs because its landing gear is so short that the plane can't get the right angle of attack on the airfoil during rotation.

It's kind of deliciously ironic that Boeing's attempts to cut corners are going to cost them more than a clean sheet redesign, but I really wonder what's going to replace the 737.

We're at the point where we're doing inappropriate things with single aisle aircraft - it's just not great that we're about to have 9 hour flights on A321XLRs. It seems like there's a natural limit of 140-160 passengers on single aisle aircraft but and hubris has us cramming 220 people in them.

Hopefully someone figures out composites enough to create lifting wide bodies but we'll see.

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