Originally Posted by
Nomad2
You know, Boeing clearly have the expertise and experience to build the best passenger jet in this sector of the market, so why have they persisted all this time with ever more modified 737s?
Plainly, the original design was good, and it could stand some enlargement, but with any design there comes a point where the possibilities for modification and improvement are exhausted. Looking at some of the larger NGs or the P-8 shows how far they came- and safely.
But adding the GTF engines was clearly a step too far. The 737 really needed a redesign into what would effectively be a new aircraft to accommodate the new engines, so why wasn't it done?
...
Because that's not what their customers wanted. They wanted a 737 that their pilots could easily move to, that their gate equipment would work with, that their mechanics were qualified to work on and had experience working with. A ground-up new airplane would have none of that, particularly if the landing gear got longer. If that's not what they wanted the purchasing airlines could go with Airbus and start some segments of their business from scratch.
It's not clear the new version is a step too far. A lack of imagination seems to have prevented anyone from noticing the potential for disaster, even after the first crash when all the variables were laid out, plain to see. This is the first foray into a semi-aided system for a generally manually controlled plane. Unlike FBW, it doesn't require scrutiny of every detail of its function merely to fly. The autopilot was essentially unaffected by the engine change and defers to the pilots when a problem happens. MCAS sits in a similar position to the driving systems being used on cars that keep lanes and try to avoid collisions; they work but, since they depend on the operator, when there's an overlap of authority there's a much more complex potential interaction.