Airlines want Boeing to build 180-250 seats "modern 757", 4500NM range before 2028.
 

Aviation Week did a survey, asking airlines what they would want Boeing to build.
It's a Nov 2021 joint Aviation Week Network and Bank of America Global Research survey
More than 900 respondents participated, including a large number of airlines and lessors.

Apparently airlines want Boeing to build a bigger (757 size) single aisle with strong focus on:
- Environmental Sustainability
- 10% - 20% Reduction in Direct Operating Costs

70% of respondents want it before 2028. Capacity should be up to 250 seats, so bigger than the A321NEO.
https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/a...oeing-aircraft

Todays reality seems Boeing needs to clear all 737MAX from storage, ramp up, resume 787 deliveries and get 777-9 certified.
But I think it's interesting to see airlines are stepping away from the small widebody 2-3-2 MOM / NMA kind of concepts, that have been floating since years

Can Boeing afford to invest, can they afford not to invest at this stage.,that's another question. Airbus and Boeing deliveries & backlogs seem out of balance.

With Boeings track record of late and no current engine in the size class, dream on.

Single aisle become very problematic when you go much over 200 seats because loading/unloading take forever. It's OK for longer range operations since the turn times are less critical, but to be economically viable, a new 200-250 passenger aircraft needs to be economical not just for long haul, but for 1-2 hour flights as well. Otherwise the market is too small.
That was a big factor in the flop of the 757-300. It's operating costs were quite good for the time, but it's turn times were horrid.

I still think Boeing's best bet would be a "767X" - 767 fuselage, updated composite wing, modern avionics, and new state-of-the-art engines. They'd just need to convince an engine company to do a new 45k thrust class engine.

Also single bogey (which the 75 did not have) becomes an issue for pavement loading and contaminated runways in the weight range suggested by the article. This limits the city pair point-to-point options, at least for the north EU bucket&spade market.

Dual bogey adds weight and complexity which is left unused unless it's twin-aisle.

What the airlines will get by 2030 at best is most likely A330-400.

​​​Based on A330-800 NEO
- minus the trim and centre tank
- severely reduced MTOM for route charges
- heavily derated engines for noise
- smaller fin for weight reduction
- A380 style hydraulics
- superlightweight interior based on biomimic 3D ALM
- redesigned flap allowing for smaller tailplane
- possibly aileron-less
​​- increased cycle count for overhauls of the LDG gear and lifespan of the load bearing structure
- redesigned outer wing with blended winglets but shorter wingspan

The benefits of proven FBW and established crew training programmes, fleet commonality et al will become priceless in the face of risk from a newly developed solution from an OEM who lost the mojo to meet their own targets.

Airbus always has the option to sell at loss just to keep the niche above 321 bridged, albeit with an oversize piece.

Still sounds like 76X, doesn't it? What the airlines are missing is an agile freight sales model + solution to take advantage of the decentralised e-commerce delivery demand to fill the surplus cargo space.

​​​​​

On the one hand, I wish Boeing had kept upgrading the 757 instead of the 737, as soon as large (high-high-bypass) engines were required, years ago. Those nice long main gear provided more space for growth.....

But I get tdracer's point.

Plus, with 4500nm range, we are talking trips of up to 10+ hours (especially if low in operating costs (even higher-bypass fans), and environmentally-friendly) - and I'd really want a bit more elbow-room on flights that long. ;)

Maybe time to revive the old 777-100X "Stubby" concept - the market has had 20-25 years to reconsider the idea.

Sometimes "the customer is always right" - and sometimes the customer is just a 5-year-old tugging on Mommy's arm yelling "I WANT.......!"

What happened to the 787-3? (-3 for 3000 NM range). Boeing even sold some but never built them.

What about a short 787?

The proposed "B783" would make even less sense nowadays than it did when Boeing cancelled it 11 years ago.

Bring back the A300/310 I say. 😁

Boeing seems to have missed the NMA window of opportunity years ago. Now the A321XLR eats their lunch. And Airbus can toy with rewinged big A321neo brothers that could be built faster and cheaper than any new Boeing competitor.

Boeings next aircraft must meet end of decade engine standards and be able to form the base of some future (bigger dimensioned) 737 follow on CFRP-family. So it must be done right from the start and it will be expensive. Before that Boeing needs some years to recover financially.

It seems (longer) single aisle aircraft are substantially lighter and cheaper to operate than same seat capacity twin aisles. A 757-300 is lighter and cheaper than a same generation 767-200.

I think comfort has more to do with a soft seat with decent knee room, entertainment and recline.

If Boeing specifies a single aisle 10-15 wider than a A321, wide seats, aisles and bigger luggage bins I'm ok.

A321 Seats are already wider than 777/787 seats, just more width per passenger over the cross section.

A big single aisle by Boeing would open the door develop a real nimble, lean, optimized efficient, possibly hybrid 737 replacement in the 2030s.

An airline offers you a job. There is a choice of type. A320/1 NEO or 737 MAX. Pay is the same, as is route structure. Which one would you choose and why?

The first offer .

An interesting list of changes there.

The no-aileron change I can see, so long as we're all happy for spoilers.

I see wings having higher aspect ratios with folding tips and mighty heavy joints/actuation systems that are justified purely on aerodynamic gains.

Vertical tail is sized for offset and engine out condition combined with some other stuff, so not sure how you get around that with a smaller vstab, unless further away. Also not so sure that horizontal stabiliser is sized around flaps, although whatever you can do to reduce flap moment about CofG is useful. Besides that, there are other manufacturing costs to consider as to whether a whole new tailplane makes sense.

I see systems being as electric as possible.

I would hope to see that, from the Airbus perspective, something useful came from WoT/WoTF and Blade (and its successor) that can be combined with the wing manufacturing tech bought in from C-series (the real reason it was bought to my understanding). Airbus must move away from black metal carbon composites design to really realise the benefits of CFRP in major wing structures.

Let's get back to the subject and not diverge into what you'd prefer to fly or what job you'd take first, but what plane will emerge.
There is a possibility that a new aircraft manufacturer will emerge in the electric area like Tesla appeared from nowhere and quickly overtook the established car manufacturers.
A plane manufacturer not constrrained on what has been before and bogged down for years in what current model they should develop further.
A manufacturer not constained financially of the drain of previous anc durrent failures/problems.
A plane maker whose share price and therebye potential for return on investment is not constrained by what it is now and what it was historically.
And not resticted by how long it historically, or more likely lately, took them to do inovation.
There should be plenty of potential areas available that Boeing have abandoned and is ripe for somebody to capitalise on left behind human expertice and experience mixed with some real new thinking. Sample: if Boeing won't be in Seattle maybe somebody else will.
Who knows. That plane could be an electric 757 stilt-shaped 4 aisled delta wing where triple-bogey wheels are used to land the extra weight of batteries, with a hydrogen fueled range extender only operating over water.

And the 5 year old is not the custmer, the mother is. Ultimately it's always the one with the money.

I just picked up Flying Blind - Peter Robison. The book portrays the McDonnell takeover as "hunter killer assassins" rolling over the engineer "boy scouts".

Boeing got subjugated to shareholder value metrics. IBM, GE and Xerox (a previous employer) also fell under the thrall of shareholder value metrics. They are all slowly sinking into the sunset.

With the current Boeing, any new design will be done on the cheap, but this time around the FAA will be closely supervising.

Robison is a Bloomberg reporter who covers the Boeing beat. So far in my reading of the book, he is more knowledgeable in corporate affairs than piloting and engineering and would have benefited from some technical help.

Whatever happened to the 797, wasn’t that supposed to be the 757NG?

Boeing will never build a 757 replacement. I would argue that the 787 is the last new aircraft program Boeing will ever do. The MAX budget was a bit less than $ 3 Billion . It was supposed to be the cash cow that would fund the 777X and NMA, however the impairment costs for the MAX debacle are nearing $ 20 Billion. The Max will never be profitable at a unit level even if Boeing builds 5000 of them and 787 program is a sucking chest wound being covered by more and more field dressings. The reality is that Boeing is locked in a crisis short term program management decision making loop that still prioritizes stock valuation over anything else. I see no sign of the C suite vision that gets them out of the downward spiral, if recovery is even still possible.

Boeing will blunder along for the next 10 years or so bleeding money and market share with a revolving cast of C suite MBA bean counters fixated on cost metrics until it hits the end of the road. We have seen this movie before and its name was McDonald Douglas Aircraft. The "businessmen" supplanted the engineers and a once proud company faded into irrelevance on the face of serial crashes caused by poor engineering (DC10/MD11 ) and lack of product investment (DC9/MD 80 series) in order to achieve short term stock market gains. That is assuming there is not another MAX crash directly caused by an engineering or production issue, in which case it is over for Boeing.

This will be a sad ending to what once was a world leader in commercial aircraft ...

You can make money by investing, developing and selling great products. Or by selling off "non core activities", cash cow upgrades, perception management and free cash flow consumption; short term value extraction.

Share holders/ WS love the second option! So executives are rewarded accordingly (Share value based bonus packages). I really hope there's $15B around to develop a new big single aisle.

You're wrong. We are operating ~230 seat A321's and do 35 min turn arounds... It depends on the airport but at most we can do it on time or within 10 mins of planned ETD for the next sector.... Just gotta use both doors...