Originally Posted by
OldnGrounded
I suppose anything is possible, but it's a bit difficult to imagine engineers saying, "We can't lengthen the main gear, because the (optional/aftermarket) airstairs wouldn't be long enough. Let's move the engines, significantly changing the aerodynamics of the airplane, and play around with an add-on to STS."
Of course, no discussion would be that short but we know that at least some of the decisions were driven by customer desire not to have to pay for extra training so the equation around gear length may have been something like
extra gear length requires $$ extra engineering plus customers wont like it versus we are fitting new engines anyway so why not beef up the s/w to manage the change on aero qualities