Date: 09 Sep 98 04:12:26
From: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM (Karl Swartz)
Organization: Chicago Software Works, Menlo Park, California
References: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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>>Which serves only to illustrate the point with which you were arguing,
>>namely, that comparing the A320 family and the 737 Classics is an apples
>>and oranges comparison. Your example might have been interesting had
>>Qantas been flying a 737-800.
>
>It isn't apples and oranges: the 2nd gen 737s (or which the -400 is a
>member) are the same design age (roughly) as the A320. AI, however, produced
>a much more capable (if more tempremental) aircraft and it has taken 10
>years for Boeing to put into service a comparable aircraft.
While the A320 made its first flight just three years (almost to the
day) after the 737-300, to claim that they are the same design age is
ridiculous. That 737 had essentially the same fuselage (except for a
few plugs), cockpit, wings, and tail (with minor mods) as the 737-100,
which made its first flight nearly *twenty* years before the A320.
New engines and the fuselage stretch were the primary changes -- hardly
enough to justify your claim that the 2nd generation 737 is roughly the
same design age as the A320.
Yes, Boeing could have built an entirely new aircraft, but chose not to
do so. That reduced time to market and lowered costs (hence incresing
profits and/or lowering price) for Boeing, while allowing much greater
commonality for previous 737 customers. Boeing would freely admit that
it was a technically inferior design to what they could have done with
a clean slate, but then a clean slate design would not have met what
they perceived as their market goals.
--
Karl Swartz |Home kls@chicago.com
|Work kls@netapp.com
|WWW http://www.chicago.com/~kls/
"The average dog is a nicer person than the average person." - Andrew A. Rooney
