Originally Posted by
Cows getting bigger
I'm not a tube driver so could someone please explain to me why the 757 was ditched, especially the -100 in favour of the 737? Was it due to the 'same type' argument that seems to pervade for the 737 Max? It seems to me that this was a good aircraft with plenty of space for bigger engines.
There never was a 757-100. Shrinking an existing aircraft and still having it economical is close to impossible. The wing is going to be way too big, manufacturing costs will only be slightly less than the baseline, and seat mile costs will be higher due to too much wing and structure. The 737-500 was a slow seller, the similar sized 737-600NG even worse, the A319 remains a slow seller and the A318 was a major flop. The 747SP was moderately successful, but that was a different time and no other aircraft offered that kind of range (and as the saying went, all they did on the 747SP was remove all the empty seats).
What really killed the 757 was it was expensive to build, as compared to the 737. When the 737-900 came out, it's capabilities were very close to the 757-200 (aside from range) and it cost a lot less to buy. Boeing tried to save the 757 with the stretched -300, but it flopped, in large part because when you make a single aisle that long it takes so long to load and unload that your turn times go to hell and it remained expensive to build and hence expensive to buy.