Revelation wrote:hivue wrote:hilram wrote:The bad idea was to spend all that Boeing cash on Share-buybacks over the years leading up to the A320 neo, as well as outsourcing engineering and expertise?
What if money had been spent on an NSA right away?
Excellent point. Boeing could have been farsighted way back before the A320NEO was even being considered, and come up with a new FBW single aisle design to replace the 40+ year-old 737 design (now 50 year-old) as an A320 competitor.
That's exactly what they investigated doing. Their conclusion is that they needed an all new CFRP narrow body aircraft to provide any advantage relative to the incumbent A320 and the technology of the day could not produce one at the desired rate and at a price point that could make a profit.
It's not clear to me that even today one could build an all new CFRP aircraft comparable to A320 and make it at the required price point and rate. In fact a main goal of NMA is to mature the manufacturing tech to get to that point at some point in the future. Therefore it should be clear Boeing doesn't think they are at that point right now.
hivue wrote:But the 737 has been Boeing's cash (to give to share holders, execs and managers, for buybacks) cow. Since it worked so well in that capacity, the temptation to keep milking it was impossible to resist for the executive suite and the bean counters. Unfortunately, karma struck big time, and the cash cow now has to be fed on cash.
I think this is a false narrative. I think you need to show how Boeing could have produced a new small airplane in 2011 that could have competed with A320 and projected a profit never mind a ROI, and I'm confident that you cannot. Without such an airplane they would be abandoning their customers and their part of the market which is madness.
The reality is that MAX was the right business strategy in 2011, and no matter how you look at it Boeing's engineering team let the company down by producing a poorly designed, implemented and tested airplane. I'm sure they were facing heavy pressure from managers, but it is part of an engineer's job to resist such pressure and not produce a poorly designed, implemented and tested airplane.
No, the MAX wasn't the right business strategy in 2011. 737 MAX R&D costs + grounding costs are approaching the cost of that of an all new single aisle aircraft.
That's exactly what they investigated doing. Their conclusion is that they needed an all new CFRP narrow body aircraft to provide any advantage relative to the incumbent A320 and the technology of the day could not produce one at the desired rate and at a price point that could make a profit.
The notion that you have to bury the competition seems to be a uniquely American trait. With the 787, Boeing apparently believed that they would "bury" the A330. At the 2012 Phoenix ISTAT conference, Boeing's Mike Bair spoke of eliminating Airbus from the large twin market.
With that kind of mindset, it's easy to understand why the management at Boeing thought that if they couldn't "kill" the A320 outright, they'd just copy what Airbus was doing with the A320neo, with their 737NG -- damn the consequences.
If Boeing, on the other hand, had decided to just better the A320neo family -- i.e. more modern A320-type fuselage with a LD3-45 compatible lower hold, aluminium wings/fuselage structure and 787-derived systems (etc.) -- they could have had that aircraft in service by now.
There is no doubt that in terms of passenger appeal the A320 trumps the 737. When the A320 was designed in the 1980s, Airbus purposely chose a cabin seven inches wider than the 737’s -- and yet, the Airbus designers knew that the wider cabin came at a cost; the wider the tube, the heavier the structure and the more the aerodynamic drag, and weight and drag translate into higher fuel consumption and higher operating costs. The difference is actually small but it still enabled Boeing to crow about having “the most profitable single-aisle ever.”
So after having been talking down the A320neo -- even before the A320neo programme was launched in December 2010 and until the Paris Air Show in 2011 -- it would perhaps have been awkward for Boeing to backtrack. Hence, Boeing's top management were seemingly trapped in their own falsity and mind-set.
and no matter how you look at it Boeing's engineering team let the company down by producing a poorly designed, implemented and tested airplane.
No, Boeing's management let the company down. Boeing's engineering team had a damn near impossible task making the MAX fully competitive with the A320neo family. Even before the MAX disasters, Boeing had gone from a 50/50 split in the single aisle market to nearly a 60/40 split in favour of Airbus.
I'm sure they were facing heavy pressure from managers, but it is part of an engineer's job to resist such pressure and not produce a poorly designed, implemented and tested airplane
Boeing engineers are also human -- many of whom being afraid of losing their jobs in a system where benefits are so closely tied to the employer-employee relationship.
Engineers working for Airbus in Europe, however, won’t have to worry about missing an insurance premium, getting sick, becoming homeless, and "having to live in their car," if they were to resist heavy pressure from Airbus managers in order not to be responsible for the production of a poorly designed, implemented and tested airplane.