What Boeing range SHOULD look like?
 

We're broken numerous swords on what was/is wrong at Boeing. And I REALLY want to avoid yet another thread about that. Let's have a purely technical/commercial talk about, ideally, what do you think Boeing's lineup should be be like?

Obviously, there should be a single-aisle aircraft, a replacement for 737. Or should there be? What else? Should there be a plane similar to A220? What about the "upper class"? Replacement for 777? One plane to replace 767 and 777? Should there have been 787? Should there be a plane larger than 777? If yes, larger by how much?

Boeing and Airbus have always had models that "leapfrog" each other, never a direct competitor. Let's talk about Boeing "dream team" of planes, an ideal range of airplanes.

In my oppinion

*737 absolutely & urgently needs replacement, basically a shrunken, single aisle, up to date 787. Airbus is delivering A32x at maximum rate, so they can't really take advantage of the MAX grounding for the next few years. Use that time to develop this plane and don't waste time with the MAX. Even if it would probably be a safe plane once it is in the air again, the public impact is enormous, and it would be better to start from scratch. After 53 years it's definitely not too late. In the meanwhile open up the NG line again (well, it's kind of active anyway with the Poseidon) and keep customers.

*757 / 767 market can be taken over by the 787 range.

*777 is for the moment more or less fine as it is, especially with the 777X.

Anything bigger? Not needed - see the A380, which is already being replaced.
Supersonic? As an aviation fanatic it would be nice to see, but as long as there's a sonic boom...absolute waste of money to develop - not even talking about the fuel efficiency of the engines.

If it was wise to buy Embraer's E-Jets program...I don't know. But it opens the commuter jet market for Boeing, just like the C-Series did for Airbus.

But...I'm not an aviation analyst, so probaly I'm not taking into account everything which is going on behind the scenes.

Flyfan...a good post, i can't disagree too much with your points...

Could a 737 replacement be shrunk/stetched to meet the 737/757 market and would it be sufficiently more efficient than an A220 or A319/A320/A321 to be viable?

The 787 takes care of the 250+ pax market

The 777X fills out the top end of the long haul market pretty well, and the end of the A380 programme shows that anything bigger isnt needed..

But strapping lots of go faster/more efficient goodies onto a 1960s airframe is no longer an option!

The 787 is a great long haul aircraft, but too heavy and thus inefficient to fill the old B757 (180-220 seats) and B767 (250-290 seat) short to mid haul routes, hence the fact Boeing bothered to launch the B737-10. So the replacment for the B737 needs the ability to a) carry the pax and b) have a suitable range, by way of relatively easy stretch similar to the A318/319/320/321/XLR.

I'll put my two cents into the piggy bank.

Regional long-hauls are a rising trend, and this multi-billion-dollar segment cannot be ignored. Boeing should have a competitor for A220. E2, while a great airplane, is obviously not the answer. It's either too big or too small for almost every application.

737 needs to be replaced with a single-aisle plane. Clean-sheet design with the latest engines and electronics. The size range should cover everything from the current 737-7 to A321XLR to replace the 757.

Airbus had a good idea of an "entry-level wide-body" with A310. With modern engines and 2020s aerodynamic, the range should be well over 12,000 km. Would make a perfect aircraft. Provided Boeing can keep the price and MTX costs down. Remember when they said 787 would costs between 60 and 80 million?

767 are a tricky market. 767 may be replaced with 787-3 which Boeing shelved many years ago. Shorter wing-span makes it a niche aircraft, however the niche itself has grown quite a lot with most intra-Asian and transcon US routes fitting right in.

777 was a great plane but needs a thorough rework. So thorough in fact, that I'd suggest a clean-sheet design. Truly 10-abreast fuselage, tweaked wing, invite Rolls-Royce and PW back as engine suppliers. I never understood why Boeing, with all its enormous profits, needed $500mil from the engine supplier.

A VLA is needed. Air traffic continues to grow, airports get more and more congested, to the point where even A380 seems inadequate. A lot of work needs to go into this. Airbus led the way and uncovered a lot of underwater rocks. Doesn't mean Boeing can rest on its laurels and wait for the market to mature. When the market finally demands a VLA, it'll be too late to start work on it.

Clean-sheet design = give existing customers a reason to do a clean-sheet evaluation and pick a competitor.

IMO Boeing needs two new families - the larger 737-9/1-0 and 757 class replacement and a 100-130(150?) size replacement. C series would have fit the bill. Remember older folks talking about 'the one that got away?' For Boeing it might be the C series.

Probably best to do it sooner rather than later when there might actually be a competitor capable of supplying product. This is one of those defining moments for a company, do we sit on the old product (which seems safest but is actually the riskiest long term strategy) or do we have a plan for the future? That plan may fail, but sitting on your laurels has always failed. You have customers hungry for product and countries hungry for new markets to enter, a dangerous time to be a legacy manufucturer.

I don't expect to see a new VLA in my lifetime (and I'm not planning to pop my clogs any time soon).

Just a guess:

ONE new family with variants
Covering the TWO explicit aircraft sizes served from 737 to 757 in efficiency, range and capacity

The 7c7 could be based on existing engines to expedite design replacing Max series and increase engines to allow larger 757 capacity and range.
The 7c7 would be single aisle, NMA based (shrunk), lighter than a Max and 787.
The 7c7 could be scaled up a 737, its fuselage widened enabling fuel/range/capacity increases required by airlines.
The 7c7 could be a scaled down 787, reducing weight enabling range increases as demanded by operators.

Type certification for one type, across the board for all models, simplifying training for future.

The problem with the C-series is that it's too expensive to build - so much so that all the aircraft currently planned will be cash flow negative. A big part of the reason for getting Airbus involved is it was hoped they could get better economies of scale to get the costs down low enough so they could build and sell the aircraft at a profit, but that appears to be a long shot. With so little skin in the game, it'll be interesting to see just how much good money Airbus will be willing to throw at the A220 in an effort to make it profitable vs. just pulling the plug and walking away.

As for Boeing, the 787 and 777X will cover the upper end of the market for the foreseeable future - the 747 is pretty much dead as a passenger aircraft but may continue on as a freighter. Like DR, I don't expect to see another VLA during my lifetime. While the NMA is on indefinite hold while they get the MAX straightened out (and the 777X certified), I suspect the NMA will get launched before too long - it won't a single aisle - probably covering ~180-250 passengers with 5,000 mile range (I still think an updated 767X with a new wing, engines, and avionics would be a good answer, but my friends still on the inside say it won't happen). Finally, once that's all handled there will be an all new narrow body covering ~130-180 passenger range.

Even if true, which I doubt, it's hardly "the problem with the C-series". First Boeing 787s cost $400mil to build. It's quite usual for any new product.

While it's gotten better (i.e. cheaper), carbon composite construction is still inherently considerably more expensive than aluminum. That's a reoccurring cost that's going to affect every C-series/A220 built. Why do you think Airbus only paid a dollar?
For a mid to long range aircraft, the weight benefits make it worth the extra cost. It's hard to make the cost/benefit of carbon composites work for short range aircraft.

What was the main problem with Boeing working to stretch and tweak the 757 platform?
I always liked the look of them and with the higher stance wouldn't they be a better starting point for modern engines than the old 737?
fog

Boeing stopped production of the B757 in 2004 due to a lack of demand.
It might of been a better starting point than the B737 but it's been out of production for 15 years so the tooling, supply chain etc. would need to be started from scratch. It would just be easier to start with a clean sheet design.

They did stretch the 757 - the 757-300. You may not be familiar with it because it was a big flop (55 built - 5% of total 757 production). The main problem with the 757 is that it was relatively expensive to build - when the 737NG came along it cost little more than half as much, and aside from long range it could do pretty much anything the 757-200 could.

Carbon composites are getting cheaper even as I type this. And A220 is the size of A320 which is a mid to long range aircraft and have used carbon composites in its construction for over 30 years. Do you have any proof of high cost of A220 production?

The A320 has some carbon bits and pieces. The A220 is close to half carbon composite by weight.
No, I don't have access to proprietary A220 cost information (and I wouldn't share proprietary information if I did). But I do know the sort of cost/benefit analysis that gets done when justifying extra costs to save weight, and planned range has a big effect.

Articles mentioned that as a common problem for Bombardier. Few sales, going against Boeing and Airbus, meant that the suppliers were leery of their financial exposure which resulted in Bombardier not getting favorable pricing. One of the possible improvements with Airbus buying the CS is that Airbus would be able to reduce supplier costs in the future.

That comment has also been stated in articles about the next narrow body design. For longer range flights the lighter weight, but more expensive construction method, is worth it. For shorter flights the cost/analysis is harder to justify.

UltraFan
Because

• Boeing thought that money was more important than any thing else
• The money would also boost the share price
• Because they could

A family of aircraft with as far as possible commonality, so that a pilot could go from smallest to largest with ease. Flight decks and handling characteristics as similar as possible along with the rest of the systems, SOPs and operational philosophy.

A single aisle 190 seater B787.
The current B787 with the 8,9,10 versions is well placed.
The new B777X once sorted out will cover the top end of the market.

Whilst there will be places for niche aircraft such as supersonic, VLA and middle of the market, why bother ?

Boeing has estimated the 'middle of the market' at over a thousand aircraft.
That's a heck of a 'niche'.
Fully agree about supersonic and VLA though.

Previously there was a huge gap between the B737-200 and the B747-200 into which the B757/767 was neatly slotted.Now with greater capacity, longer range narrow bodies and much smaller wide bodies that gap has narrowed considerably.

Many airlines needed something between the 73 and 74 but many of those would now choose either a B737-900 or a B787-800. Only a few would specifically require something in the middle, however if the growth in air travel is sufficient it could pull the number up to a viable total.

With the MAX debacle necessitating a new narrow body sooner, rather than later and ongoing problems with the B787 and B777W Boeing won’t have the resources to take on another new project for a number of years, leaving Airbus A321 variants virtually unchallenged in this area.

Are the economics really worth a narrowbody clean sheet design using composites ?


I would have thought a new Boeing product range based on the 787 design would be the way to go


Then I looked up the empty weight on the 787-9, it’s very similar to the much older three engine DC10


This was a big surprise, I thought the main reason to build with composites is to save weight and that just doesn’t appear to be the case with the 787


It seems most of the efficiency comes from the advanced engines, systems and wing


I imagine an all new composite design could be ‘over built’ less and have a lower empty weight but it makes you wonder whether it’s worth it

That is interesting. Why was the 757 such much more expensive to build? Didn't it use the same fuselage cross section that the 707, 727, 737 all shared? If it really was that much more expensive to build, wouldn't that have been true of the A310 and A320 also?

That is very surprising, especially as the MDs had a reputation of being built like tanks.

The A320 vs B727 was a good example of how efficiency improved over 25 years. Basically the A320 does the same job with one fewer engine, one fewer flight crew member and uses half the fuel.

With the basic A320 being 30 years old now, I wonder if a brand new design would offer similar improvements, given that engine and flight crew numbers couldn’t be reduced.

When the 757 was originally designed (1978-1981), it was expected that the cost of jet fuel would skyrocket over the next 20 years (the number I remember was $10/gallon by 2000, which of course didn't happen). So, pretty much every design trade of lower weight vs. lower cost fell on the side of lower weight. Further, the 757 tooling was designed for a max production rate of 7/month (one very 3 work days). By contrast, by 2000 they were cranking out 737s at over 1/day. This gave considerable economies of scale to the 737 and much lower overhead costs per aircraft. Eventually as customers chose the 737 over the 757, and the production rate dropped on the 757, the overhead costs associated with keeping the 757 line open became too high (especially since that same factory space could be devoted to manufacture of additional highly profitable 737s).

Single aisle becomes problematic at around 200 passengers - the turn times become excessive because it takes so long to load/unload compared to twin aisle. That was a big problem with the 757-300 - it's costs per seat mile looked really good, but the overall economics not so much because it spent more time on the ground (I've been near the back in a 757-300, 10 minutes after they opened the door to disembark, I still couldn't see any sign of movement).
There are a lot of 757s and 767s out there that are getting quite long in the tooth, and the A321 NEO simply isn't a good replacement. It's single aisle and it's wing is too small - to make the A321LR viable they loose cargo capability which is often a bigger money maker than the SLF.

Fuselage length also becomes a problem as well, increased length needs increased ground clearance or tail strikes become a greater risk. Some smaller airports even have difficulty with the A321 on the apron as the tail sticks out too far.

Hopefully Airbus won’t repeat Boeing’s mistake and try to take the A320 beyond the current range, any more than an A321XLR needs to be an all new design.

The 787-9 is 12000 Kg lighter than the DC-10. That seems a significant weight savings.

The weight of those really big fan engines has also skyrocketed. I don't remember numbers, but the two engines on the 787 weigh quite a bit more than the three smaller engines of a DC-10.

Not sure where you get those numbers, I’ve seen empty weights of 254000lbs for the DC10-30 and 244000lbs for the 787-9, only a 10k lb difference


And surprising

Thanks for the insight! I had suspected overhead but not realized weight savings were prioritized in the design. I suppose overhead does not make that much of a difference once development and invest for tooling is written off.

So how does the 757 compare to the A32x in weight and fuel consumption? Propably apples and oranges because of size and range differences.

Did the 767 see the same optimization for weight? AFAIR, it does not compare favorably even to early A330.

Basic weight of a B747-400 177,400 kg
Basic weight of a A340-600 179,200 kg
A full B747-400 from London to Orlando has same operating costs of an A330.
Bring on the B747-900 with B787 technology.

What "operating cost" are you referring to? A 747-400 weighs a lot more than an A330 and would have higher direct operating costs. I've seen reports that the A330-300 has the lowest CASM for the Atlantic. It's not trying to carry an airplane (wing, gear, engines, etc) capable of 7,000+ nm flights on a flight only 3-4,000 miles.

Page 4-8 has the 2013 costs per hour. 300+ passenger jet cost was $14,600/hr, <300 was $9,100/hr. Four engine jets cost per hour was $14,000, two engine jets were $10,300 per hour. https://www.faa.gov/regulations_poli...4-op-costs.pdf

That strategy of patching old models has worked very well for them with the Max....

Mmm. There's BS, and then there's gold plated, diamond crusted, pearl infused, BS. For anyone in doubt, this falls in the latter camp

I don't recall that weight was as big a concern during the 767 development relative to the 757, although I couldn't say why that was the case. I do know that when I was working the 757 (late 1990's) we worked several changes that resulted in heavier parts but with much lower manufacturing costs. It's probably worth noting that neither the 757 or 767 were envisioned to morph into the longer range aircraft they eventually became - in the case of the 767 it went from 320,000 lbs at EIS to over 400k less than ten years later (helped considerably by the upgraded engines that came along in 1988).
It's not really fair to compare the 767 with the A330 - the A330 came along over 10 years after the 767 and hence the more direct 767 comparisons would be with the A310 and A300-600.