Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
The root cause believe it or not was the 787. Boeing admitted that they should have just built the whole thing in house and got it right the first time. Instead they outsourced it had a laundry list of problems which flowed into production delays.
Plan A was to make the 737 Max a new design using 787 technology but that became so delayed they were then forced to cobble the 737 back together with even bigger engines to be able to compete with the A320 and now here we are with a looming disaster. Even if the Max gets going again there might be so much negative publicity that people refuse to fly on it. That will be Boeing's and the Airlines worst nightmare.
In doing so, they are likely have already pushed airlines into the arms of Airbus. Think about it, this iteration of the 737 is the airframe is maxed out (no pun intended). There is unlikely to be another 737 generation of commonality for airlines. They are going to have to bite the bullet with pilot training, either way with the next narrow body Boeing 7x7 or an Airbus product. Why take a risk on the 7x7 when there is a good airframe today, that still has the ability to grow into the future with minimal CCQ costs?
Airbus looks to have made far sighted design decisions with the A32x family.