737 max loses window

Indeed. At this point surely nobody will believe it when they say "don't worry, we didn't forget anything else'.

And trying to fit engines that are too large for the aircraft.

I'm sure it was said that the door had damaged the lavatory and got stuck open. A flight attendant did manage to close it eventually though.

It also ripped the headsets off the first officer and partially off the captain.

But is it? Loose nuts have been found in the tail (sub type not mentioned), which was reported two weeks ago. Found by an airline on an aircraft in active service, Boeing have then checked some aircraft waiting for delivery and found the same on one aircraft, they told the airlines to check their fleets. This has gone under the radar though unless you look at the correct websites.

United have reported 5 aircraft (I don't think they have said out of how many, but they have 79 in the fleet) with loose bolts in the door plug area. They weren't the same across all 5 aircraft either. From looking at the photo, I don't see why you would even touch those bolts to remove the door plug. And Alaska Airlines have found more aircraft with loose hardware.

They've only found those loose items because they've looked at that specific area. So in my opinion there is a possibility of more loose items being found if they checked critical areas on the aircrafts.

The 5 United aircraft were also delivered during a 10 month period between November 2022 to September 2023.

Sounds like O'Leary/Ryanair are starting to worry this will causes problems for them too.

That's exactly what Boeing were doing when they were caught with their pants down, the NMA (New Midsize Aircraft) was a clean sheet design to fill the gap left by the 757 and 767 but longer range narrowbodies have killed that market, thus Airbus isn't selling many A330neo.

Also the 757 would have needed a lot of redesign to fulfil the role of the 737, it's too long to be a regional or even feeder airliner. Airlines are trying to reduce the number of types in their fleets.

They should have been working on a clean sheet design for the 737, it's a design from the 60s where as the A320 is from the 80s, Airbus had room to sling bigger engines underneath, Boeing didn't but insisted on doing it anyway.

It's not like it would have hurt sales getting a new type certification, definitely not as much as 2 fatal crashes (thus far).

Letting one or two civil customers dictate an aircraft's design has been shown time after time to be flawed strategy. BEA/Trident BOAC/VC-10 are just two examples.

Presume you mean conversion !

It is true that retraining a whole fleet of existing pilots does cost money in the short term but you get over it and you've got the next type for 20-25 years usually.

I was on the selection team in the competition between NEO & Max for a very well known A320 airline and the transition costs to Max were not a significant factor, it would just have been a bit painful to manage but we'd done it the other way previously. Airbus were so desperate not to lose us that we got a sticker price we couldn't refuse.

Part of the issue for Boeing was the timeline. They prevaricated so long after Airbus announced the A320NEO that the entry into service of even a 737 derivative to compete meant them facing massive sales bleed whilst the new one was designed & certified. What they should have done was anticipated and pre-empted Airbus with a new design years before given their cash cow was 20 years older than Airbus's. Cash cow is the key phrase though, they got giddy on the NG orders and margins thinking it would never end.

Spot on. The reality is that developing a new clean-sheet narrowbody 20 years ago would have cost Boeing $Billions, and that would mean less money to pay shareholders’ dividends & executive bonuses. So they keep slapping another coat of lipstick on the same old 1960s pig.

Given the mention of A320NEOs, does anyone happen to know what the primary bottleneck is in producing them more quickly? Is it wings, engines, final assembly, or something else?
As I understand it there are four final assembly sites,Toulouse, Hamburg, Tianjin (China) and Mobile, Alabama. Are all the wings made at Broughton, or are there other sites making them?

Edit, I've just read that China makes A320 wings for locally assembled aircraft. Are there any other A320 series wing manufacturing sites planned?

Engines have been the primary critical path for the last couple of years, particularly with Pratt's problems. It also comes down to industrial risk even if you have the order book. These things take years to ramp up and similar to ramp down (without incurring massive stop costs). Covid taught us that even the traditional factors such as economics, wars and finance weren't the only considerations.

Someone mentioned it here on another thread, RR not having an engine in this sector must hurt them a great deal.