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by icegreentea2
863 days ago
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Scaling up and down aircraft is usually done by changing their length since that's both structurally very straight forward, and it can usually be done with relatively benign aerodynamic impacts. The 787 is significantly larger than the 737. It's not just built to have more passengers, but also to carry way more fuel so it can go more than twice as far. While you can always take off with less fuel to stave off the worst of the penalty when making shorter flights, a penalty remains. Scaling down a 787 to hit the 737's operating niche likely means: * Reducing the body diameter/width
* Shrinking the wings (the 787 wing has 3x the area of the 737 wing)
* Reducing the length The first two operations are really non-trivial. Certainly not impossible, but challenging enough that calling it a "787 redesign/miniaturization" vs "clean sheet model with 787 heritage" gets really blurry. |
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Also wide-bodies are just different from narrow bodies in length or diameter. Narrow bodies are designed to go through more and frequent pressurization cycles, fit and weigh enough for certain gates and runways, carry different amounts of cargo.
The other variable is the cost to build the plane you describe. The reason Boeing decided to rengine the 737 for the NG instead of the 757 is the 737 costs less to build and operate. The 737 MAX 8-200 and the MAX 10 are very economical to fly on a level a shrunken 787 couldn't reach.
It's also important to remember the 737 Max was kind of a stop gap on the higher capacity variants for the NMA. If Boeing had been willing to give the MAX a slightly different type rating and difference training for the MAX, MCAS would not have been necessary. Then the MAX 9 and 10 could be replaced by the NMA and bought Embraer with stretched E2 jets replacing the MAX 7 and 8 if executives were concerned with more than their annual stock comp.