I am ready to consider that proposition as soon as I see quantitative evidence.
It seem it is possible to write specifications that cannot easily be met by incremental change, and that might be one reason why the British aircraft industry ended up creating technically competent aircraft with little sales potential.
Actually, the 737 MAX as a new plane would have been fine. The MCAS software was used to try to give it the same flight characteristics as the 737 so that existing 737 pilots did not have to get additional certification for it.
Yeah, but they didn’t just build a new plane (pilots perhaps?) and instead always seem to try to modify existing designs, which would argue that is cheaper than greenfield.
It wasn't Boeing that was trying to save money themselves- it was Boeing trying to save airlines money. There are hundreds of thousands of people today who can fly a 737, and mechanics who can fix a 737, etc. The airlines wanted to get the better fuel efficiency from modern engines on a plane that everyone already knew how to fly and fix. Boeing actually started with a clean sheet design, tried to pitch it to airlines, the airlines didn't bite, so Boeing gave them what they wanted- the same plane but more fuel efficient. It was a huge fiasco, but it was about leveraging the advantage Boeing had in users, not saving on development costs.
“Give us a 737 but more crashy” is also not what their customers really wanted. There were surely more possibilities available than just the two extremes of “737 but crashes more” and “tiny Concorde.”
American Airlines ordered 130 330neos and 100 "re-engined 737s" while Boeing was still pitching their "smaller 787" design. Note that this was the first time AA had ever ordered a non-Boeing plane.
Everything stems from Boeing taking this deal. Within the constraints of the 737 type certification: more efficient engines are larger, larger engines must move forward, forward engines change flight characteristics, flight characteristics must be augmented to maintain certification.
So you are correct that Boeing had choices other than "crashy 737", but that choice was between throwing billions away to Airbus and the crashy 737.
That's the problem - it's not clear to me that it could have worked as intended. But you can easily get that impression in high level meetings I imagine.
Modifications to old certifications are subject to older certification rules. They can be flown by pilots with existing training. Thus saving money at the cost if safety and decades of improvements in technology and regulation. End of story ... And of lives.
a new plane would not have been eligible for the same type certification, thus forcing all pilots who flew it to obtain the new type rating. This training is very expensive for the airlines.
in other words, Boeing's thesis was, because we (heavily) modified the 737, it's the same basic plane. The FAA accepted this argument. The FAA would never have accepted the argument that a totally new design was "actually a 737 ".
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll bite:
The 747 MAX that killed 346 people in two separate accidents and was grounded for nearly two years and cost Boeing 10's of billions of dollars in fines, cancelled orders, etc.?
It is perhaps not the best example of modifications to an existing design.
All because they didn't want to completely redesign the landing gear, to give it a higher ride height, which would allow the engines to be put at a normal position under the wing, thereby permitting a normal center of thrust axis. Just to keep the existing faa certification.
IIRC part of the problem with the Max was that since it was based on the 737 it bypassed a lot of processes that a brand new design would've had to go through. Both on the regulatory and pilot training side (eg a pilot who was already qualified on other 737 variants would get a fast tracked and probably inadequate training)
