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Agreed. And these are not small bolts from our personal vehicles holding this door onto the aircraft.
Well no, I suppose not. Priority one is hopefully ensuring correct assembly, including accounting for all bolts.
)Up until Oct 2018, if I was a Boeing shareholder I would have been pleased that the firm had stretched out the amortization of 737 program to sixty years, much like how the B-52 development cost was paid for over seventy years ago! Imagine if an automobile newly launched in 1964, such as the iconic Ford Mustang was still produced today and remaining a bestseller at that, with the same essential body and production setup, with occasional upgrades to powertrain and electronics - basically this: Revology Cars. Ford shareholders would be ecstatic at the ROI.
DerAdlerIstGelandet
why would the anti-ice system cause possible engine destruction? And isn't that more of the engine manufacturer's fault than Boeing? Presumably these engines are not exclusive to the 737 Max line?
www.npr.org
Just listened to this pilot.
All Things Considered for February 28, 2024
Hear the All Things Considered program for February 28, 2024
Transport Canada orders Boeing 737 jet operators to limit use of anti-icing system amid safety concerns | CBC News
Airlines flying Boeing 737 MAX jets in Canada will have to limit the use of an engine anti-icing system to avoid possible catastrophic damage to engine housings, according to a new directive from Transport Canada.www.cbc.ca
Very informative, thanks for posting.Commercial aerospace strategy is a (small) part of my job. There's a short answer, a long answer and a REALLY long answer to that question. There's also a book length answer, but something like that might be coming out later this year
Short answer is - Boeing doesn't know exactly what it's going to build in the future. At least, not yet. But it's working on lots of things. But they probably won't be here until about 2035.
Long answer is - Boeing plans to keep building 777, 737 and 787 derivatives for at least the next one to two decades, and probably longer. Based on program accounting quantities and assuming full rate production can be indifinitely maintained, the 737 MAX will be in production for at least another 21 years, the 787 another 14 years and the 777/777X about 7 or 8 years.
Officially, new Boeing clean sheet designs are waiting on a new generation of engine technology offering 10-20% reductions in fuel burn to materialise. This is not expected for 5-8 years. Boeing has completed market studies for the NMA (think a modernised 757) and the NSA (787 technology shrunk down to 737 size), but is not willing to go to market without better engines on the wings.
A summary of the REALLY long anwer is -
1) A bunch of financial considerations.
Making a new aircraft is hugely expensive - the 787 cost somewhere between $28.5 and $32 billion to develop and get into production, and then Boeing has incurred another ~$30 billion to date in production, tooling and other program costs. Boeing needs huge financial resources to fund a new aircraft program.
Boeing is loss making. The company has lost just short of $22 billion on an operating basis since 2019. The 737 MAX debacle means the company will probably be loss making again in 2024.
Plus, Boeing has a bunch of other financial commitments at the moment. It's committed to paying down $15 billion of the debt it took on to survive COVID-19 by the end of 2025. Boeing also needs to pay a bunch of compensation to airlines/leasing companies for 737 MAX & 787 groundings and delays, along with paying for the airframe rectification work. In 4Q 2023 alone, this totalled $2.7 billion.
Basically Boeing isn't going to market with a new aircraft until it is in a better financial situation (and gets its equity and return on investment out of the toilet). Bear in mind, Boeing is a company with $16 billion in liquidity available right now.
2) Production and engineering.
Boeing can't figure out how to build a new aircraft cheaply enough for its own liking, particularly not aircraft with high proportions of carbon composite. The NMA design was supposedly close to going to market, twice. But Boeing pulled the plug both times because they couldn't find a way to manufacture the aircraft at the unit cost they wanted. Airbus is having a similar problem with the A220, a design that it acquired/took over from Bombardier. It still hasn't managed to get the aircraft to unit break-even, despite doubling the rate of production (to ~6 per month).
Boeing is also under pressure to onshore its engineering resources for any new aircraft. But it simply can't find enough trained engineers in the US at the moment to deal with it's current engineering demands, let alone developing a new aircraft. Boeing also doesn't really hire foreign workers in the US (H-1B visas) - less than 100 foreign workers are employed at Boeing Commerical Airplanes, out of a workforce of more than 35,000.
3) Uncertainty about future propulsion for commerical aircraft.
Generally speaking, an airline is only interested in a new aircraft if it offers at least a double digit reduction in fuel burn compared to the aircraft it's replacing. So, without any new engine designs available in the short term, OEMs are stuck offering refinements of their existing airframes.
The airline industry has also committed to cutting its emissions by 50% by 2050. 96% of industry emissions come out of the tailpipe of a turbofan or turboprop. So, the industry needs biofuels/SAF (which offer 60-80% lifecycle emissions reductions, but are only available in tiny amounts at the moment). The sector is also really interested in low/zero emission fuel sources and new engine technology.
There's a drive at the moment for hybrid-electric systems in the 2MW range for 50-100 seat turboprop replacements, with ATR and Embraer likely to put new aircraft into service with this technology around 2030.
Bigger aircraft are more difficult. Unless battery technology becomes an order of magnitude more efficient in terms of both weight and energy density, liquid fuels are really the only game in town for flights longer than 1000km. It's hard to find a fast charging point when you're crossing the Pacific.
So, the big engine makers (GE, Safran, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce) aren't offering new engines at the moment and they're all looking at alternative fuels for the future - hydrogen is popular, but there's also research into methane and ammonia. Which means that there's massive uncertainty at the moment about what sort of engines are going to end up powering the next few generations of aircraft.
Agreed, yet somehow there has not been a single airline crash in the USA since 2009. Given how the 737 Max was simply tweaked after two foreign crashes, I suppose we'll tragically need a new US one before major changes occur.
apnews.com
I wonder how qualified the FAA is to conduct this review and to report such findings.The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday its audit of manufacturing at airplane-maker Boeing and its key supplier turned up "multiple instances" of them failing to make sure manufacturing met quality standards.
The FAA said that it found "non-compliance issues" with Boeing's manufacturing-process control and parts handling and storage. It did not provide details.
[...]
Last week, the FAA gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan for addressing safety concerns raised by the FAA and an independent panel of experts from industry, government and academia.
Federal safety officials say Boeing fails to meet quality-control standards in manufacturing
Federal regulators say they have found multiple instances in which Boeing and its key supplier lack adequate measures to control for quality in the manufacturing of jetliners.
It does make you wonder how many potential sales they've lost now because of this, and if those lost sales were worth more than the savings from ignoring quality issues?
