Originally Posted by
vilas
John Leahy ex CCO of Airbus said A380 was undone because when they launched in 2000 the engine manufacturers offered them engines which according to them was the most economical and anything better was atleast ten years away. But in three years the engine manufacturers turned out new engines for B787 which was 12% better in SFC. B737 was also undone by new engine technology in a different way. The 1960s low wing aircraft was unsuitable for high bypass engine era. Had Boeing anticipated this they should not have made 800 series itself but built a new aeroplane which being later generation aircraft may be even outlasted Airbus neo. Unfortunately they had gone for widebody 787 and by the time it turned profitable Boeing was left with no gumption to invest in another new aircraft. They hurriedly did another plastic surgery on the old lady which turned out very nasty and apart from financial damage has even destroyed their credibility and reputation.
Actually, Boeing was planning a completely new aircraft to replace the 737 (part of, IIRC, was called 'project 2016'). Problem was when Airbus announced the A320 NEO, it caught Boeing completely off guard. Not only where they resource limited (both 787 and 747-8 still a year away from type cert/EIS), if Boeing had launched the new aircraft immediately, it would have been five to six years before initial cert. Worse, both Boeing and Airbus were pushing 737s and A320s out the door at ~50/month - it would take another four to five years to get a brand new aircraft up to that sort of production rate. It would have meant giving the A320 NEO a near monopoly and the market for about five years of production - roughly 3,000 aircraft. That was too bitter of a pill to swallow, so Boeing cobbled together the MAX - which kept the A320 NEO advantage down to around 12 months.
With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, doing a completely new aircraft looks much better than what happened on the MAX, but no one could foresee that 10 years ago...
BTW, the A380 had much bigger problems than it's engines (although they didn't help) - even now Leahy is unwilling to admit he screwed the pooch when they launched the A380 just as the market was moving to big, long range twins.
I've posted this before, but the problems with MCAS all go back to two related assumptions. First, that an MCAS malfunction was no worse than a stab trim runaway, and two that the crew could recognize and accommodate such a failure in four seconds (this second assumption pre-dating the MAX, possibly going back to the original 737-100/200). Based on these assumptions, an MCAS malfunction was judged as no worse than "Major" - same as a routine engine shutdown - and single failures are acceptable.
Turns out that both assumptions were wrong - four seconds to recognized and correct for a stab trim runaway was too optimistic (at least for some pilots), and it was not recognized as a Stab Trim malfunction. Had MCAS been originally identified as a Critical system (as it is now), it never would have been designed the way it was.