Originally Posted by
Smythe
tdracer.....remember the SW 737's, with only avionics for the left seat? I think they only upgraded when Boeing said they were going to start charging them more for that! (well, and they wanted RNAV/RNP)
Never spent much time working the 737. But I do recall on the 747-400, Autostart was an extra cost option, which was reasonable for Pratt and Rolls, since it required costly additions to the engine. plus wiring changes to the aircraft. But the CF6-80C2 FADEC had autostart basic, all you needed to do was hook it up (plus it was a much better autostart system than the other guys, especially Pratt). For a while every GE powered 747-400 had autostart - in fact we didn't even have drawings for a non-autostart 747-400/CF6-80C2. Then someone came in, ordered a couple GE powered 747-400s, but declined the autostart option. Cost a small fortune to develop and certify the configuration, just so that we could charge
less for the aircraft.
I always figured we should have simply had the sales team tell them we were having a limited time special and would throw in autostart for free...