Posted on 12/12/2005 9:57:19 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
In 1965, when Boeing launched its new short-range 4737 twinjet, some Wichita workers didn't think there would be a large market for the plane.
They figured the much bigger 747 would be the hotter seller. After all, airlines were using hubs more than they were offering point-to-point service -- direct routes between cities that bypassed hubs.
At the time, Wichita workers built the tooling for the 737 fuselage as if they would manufacture only about 100 planes in all.
Time has proven them wrong.
The 737 is the most popular jetliner in commercial aircraft history. It has provided jobs for thousands of Wichita workers for dozens of years.
This week, workers will load the 5,000th 737 fuselage onto a railcar in south Wichita and send it to Boeing's facility in Renton, Wash. In February, the plane will be delivered to Southwest Airlines, which operates the largest 737 fleet in the world.
Employees at Spirit AeroSystems, formerly Boeing's commercial aircraft facility, will celebrate the milestone on Tuesday.
"That has been the mainstay of our commercial line for a number of years," said Spirit AeroSystems chief executive Jeff Turner.
And it appears it will stay that way. At least in the short term.
Boeing has 737s on order for delivery in the latter part of this decade, said Boeing spokesman Craig Martin.
Just last month, airlines in China ordered 150 737s in a deal valued at as much as $9 billion on list prices.
Boeing said its newest 737s -- the 600, 700, 800 and 900 models -- are economical and the most technologically-advanced airplanes in their class. Boeing also offers a 737 cargo plane, a combination cargo-passenger model and a business jet.
With an upturn in the market, Boeing is raising 737 production rates. At the end of October, Boeing had orders for 1,046 737s.
"The orders have just been phenomenal," said JSA Research aerospace analyst Paul Nisbet. "We won't see any let up in production, I don't think, until the next decade, and then it's far from certain."
But will Wichita build another 5,000 737 fuselages?
"No," Nisbet said. "I think sometime in the next decade, (Boeing will) replace it with an aircraft that will have the same or better technology than the 787," Boeing's newest jet.
"We're surmising that in 2011 or 12 or 13 -- in that time frame -- talk will be about launching or perhaps actually launching a new replacement aircraft," Nisbet said.
Martin agreed that Boeing will likely replace the 737 -- there are still 4,188 flying today -- with an all-new airplane. But how soon is hard to say.
"The market is going to tell us that," Martin said.
Southwest Airlines has been informally talking with Boeing about the potential of using the enhancements in technology and fuel efficiencies found in its advanced design aircraft -- the 777 and the 787 Dreamliner -- to improve the smaller 737, said Southwest executive vice president for operations Mike Van de Ven.
They aren't talking about a total replacement, he said.
When there are new aircraft designs, "you get smarter and smarter and you learn more things," Van de Ven said. The airline is interested in how much transferability there could be to the 737.
"We have a great partnership with Boeing," he said. "They are very interested in our perspective."
Boeing delivered the first 737-100 in 1967 to Lufthansa Airlines. In the ensuing years, the 737 has kept thousands employed in Wichita, although employment has risen and fallen with cycles in the business.
Production of the 737 fuselage makes up about 45 percent of the Wichita operation's business, said Spirit vice president and general manager of fuselage structures Richard "Buck" Buchanan. Including the struts and nacelles -- work the plant added later -- 60 percent of the business is 737 work, he said.
Expertise on the fuselage is a skill Spirit is actively marketing to other potential aviation customers as it seeks to grow the business.
Spirit's Turner said he thinks Boeing will want Spirit to do work on whatever plane will be the next single-aisle aircraft.
The goal would be to win the same amount of work on a new plane as it currently has on the 737, he said.
"Of course, we have to earn that opportunity," Turner said.
In the meantime, "we are selling ourselves and our capabilities now to the whole industry," he said.
I don't know. What would you use as two engines on the 727 to replace the three old JT8Ds? You can't tail-mount CFM-56s like the 737-300 and later use. And if you did what the "Super 27s" did and slap JT8D-217s back there (as on the MD-88), you've still got older, noisier, less fuel-efficient engines. RR Tays like UPS uses on their 727s? Or maybe IAE engines like on the MD-90? I'm actually surprised the 727 hung on in mainline service as long as it did (until Delta got rid of theirs in 2003).
I think the 727's the most gorgeous jetliner ever built, but I can see why the 737's eclipsed it. What Boeing's done with that design--swapping the old JT8Ds for the CFM-56s, stretching it, adding the winglets, almost completely recreating the avionics in the NG -600 through -900--is just remarkable. They've taken a short-hop 100-passenger plane and turned it into a transcontinental plane hauling nearly 170-180 people.
But nothing compares to the sound of three JT8Ds wide open and belching soot. Hush kits? We don' need no steenkin' hush kits! :)
}:-)4
You would pretty much have an MD-88, but with 3 across rather than 2 across seating.
Maximum seating -
MD-88 - 172, typical 142
727-200 (streatched version) - 189, typical 145.
So in a standard layout, there is a 3 seat differential.
I always follow the Today in the Sky blog and noticed that they mentioned this today too.
Its America West crews and iron, US doesn't have the rights to fly the flights, as they don't have ETOPS on their certificate. We also have the right to do one Europe flight with our certificate, possibly Dublin or Shannon.
Speaking of Southwest, I was on a flight arriving at Sacramento. There was a pretty stiff headwind (as is often the case during certain times of the year in Sac), and the touchdown was a bit hard. As we taxied to the gate, the hostess gave her usual "welcome to Sacramento, thank you for flying Southwest," and added "and we hope you enjoyed that demonstration of Naval aviation upon landing."
Why not. I'm talking about replacing the three engine configuration with two more powerful side mounted engines and getting rid of the S-ducted middle engine. I don't see why the CFM-56 engines wouldn't have worked in that configuration. In fact it wouldn't have required the extreme modifications to the engines and nacelles that were required to put them on the 737.
What Boeing's done with that design--swapping the old JT8Ds for the CFM-56s, stretching it, adding the winglets, almost completely recreating the avionics in the NG -600 through -900--is just remarkable.
They didn't just add winglets. The NG 737 has two whole new wings. There's the wing for the 737 600 and 700 and the wing for the 800 and 900. They are supercritical airfoils like the one on the 777.
But it would have standardized the 757/767 cockpit on smaller aircraft. One of Airbus' selling points in the comonality of cockpit layouts across their whole line of aircraft.
Instead, they put the cockpit in the 757 for their large, single aisle plane, before dumping the whole concept of large, single aisle planes except for the 737 in cattle car configuration where it will hold up to 189 - identical to the maximum on the 727.
The 737-900ER will be able to hold up to 215 passengers in cattle car configuration so it will be able to replace the 757-200 for domestic markets. The 757 has become popular for long thin trans-Atlantic operations so some airlines that own 757's might want to replace their domestic 757's with 737-900ER's in order to redeploy their 757's.
I don't understand your post. I flew JetBlue last month from JFK to San Diego and back and there wasn't an empty seat on either flight.
Good to know! Thanks for the info.
How is the merger going anyway? Since I live on the east coast, I always fly US Airways, but I could imagine a culture difference between the two airlines.
I'll try to stay away from them. I found the 757 to be the least comfortable jetliner Boeing ever produced. (The big 737 is probably going to be pretty bad as well.)
I'm retired but I hear lots of fun stuff.
The east guys in PHL are from the union thug gimme gimme mentality and distrust any management. The west guys are survivors (we were left for dead many times) and we trust our management and are annoyed at losing the name that we fought to keep alive for so long.
West says AWA bailed out USAirways and that they would be dead without us, East says that they have been around forever and must be treated and respected as if they were the ones that bought out AWA (when its actually the reverse).
Its an ugly culture clash, I'd send 50 guys out to Philly with baseball bats to clean house.
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