737 Max

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Yes, the newer equipment should have been designed with the allocations in mind.
In the UK, the 900 MHz cell phone band was turned over to some other use, and the equipment was shifted to India (the tower repeaters).
That is another issue, every country has its own modifications, and in an increasingly global world, the designers and equipment builders have to bear in mind what is allowed and forbidden in different countries.
 
So my daughter flew from Halifax to London in a 737 Max 8 this week. I warned her it might run out of fuel 😉 (since when can a 737 cross the Atlantic?). But she did arrive unscathed albeit after a 2 hour delay due to a radio malfunction. So my fear of the Max has receded and I am left with a general, cautious cynicism about the aviation business.
 
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So my daughter flew from Halifax to London in a 737 Max 8 this week. I warned her it might run out of fuel 😉 (since when can a 737 cross the Atlantic?). But she did arrive unscathed albeit after a 2 hour delay due to a radio malfunction. So my fear of the Max has receded and I am left with a general, cautious cynicism about the aviation business.
My wife and I flew from Halifax to Paris in a 737-800 a few years ago, not a Max 8. It was an interesting flight in late December. There had been a snow storm in Halifax the previous night, so we were delayed leaving. Then the plane was catching up with the storm, which was on its way to the UK. We were supposed to land to refuel in Ireland, but they decided to divert further north to Scotland to avoid the storm. Then a while later they realized that with the tail wind they should be able to go south of the storm and make it all the way to Paris, and we did.
I also flew WestJet from Halifax to Glasgow, and I think that was a 737 as well, though I can't swear to that now.
 
Indeed. And who are the perpetrators? The executives that used bean counters to design a plane instead of engineers. After the McDonnell-Douglas merger, the corporate culture changed. They made a great engineering company into a bean counter company. Just like the once great Cadillac dropped turds like the Cimarron and Catera, Boeing floated a real turd with the Max.
 
FAA were complicit. All starts when an airline boss refused to wait for an entirely new plane and forced boeing into a 737 update too far, compounded by airbus getting a head start, leading to boeing chamging the specs of engine two or three times to increasing diameter to match airbus fuel efficiency and not having enough under wing room, meaning the fatal design decision to push engines forward and end up with a plane that needed software to counter the weight imbalance.
 
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A320neo has a taller under carriage to make room for the larger engines, compared to the original version.
It still looks too close to the ground to me.

Boeing could have done that, as their engines had the gearbox to one side on the 737-800 because of larger fans. It was a known issue.

The 737 was actually a two engine version of the 707, same fuselage!
Boeing have had issues with the 787 also, what with battery fires and so on.
And the engine issue has not helped either, the P&W engines have had more issues compared to the IAE engines used by a lot of Airbus 320neo.

That added to the pressure on Boeing to make the plane fly and earn money for the owners.

It is the airlines' bean counters who will decide if Boeing planes have sufficient up time rates to make them competitive with Airbus to be worth purchasing.
It seems the 320 is having a much larger number of firm orders compared to Boeing.

That will have added to the pressure on the people in the engineering teams to allow the plane to fly.
The results are known, nothing to add.
 
I think I heard that they had to put an exhaust pipe to outside the fuselage on those batteries to let the smoke out.
 

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I regularly fly in a former RAAF C-47 which was built in 1942 and has around 14,000 hrs on the airframe. Was converted to passenger configuration after purchase from the Air Force.

Built like a brick s - -house, comfortable, roomy, very safe; although not exactly quiet or fast. No computer software except the radio and navigation aids,

As long as there's avgas, it will keep flying longer than some accountant-designed flying blowtorch.

Geoff
 
Still on piston engines? Who is able to maintain those?
Or the popular turbo prop conversions?

The DC-3 was a rugged plane indeed, and with proper maintenance, very long lived...the C-47 was a modified military version of the DC-3.
Yes, Pratt and Whitney radials; no problems with parts or maintenance either.

I don't think there are any of the Basler turboprop conversions in Australia. There are at least six airworthy DC-3s/C-47s but only one is a genuine DC-3: ex-Ansett Airlines with Wright Cyclone radial engines. "Shortstop Jet Charter" runs dinner flights and other charter flights around Melbourne in its C-47, on which I've flown eight times.

There are many vintage radial engined aircraft in Oz, mainly ex-military Harvards/Texans, Winjeels and even a Corsair. There's also a Lockheed Super Constellation, a Lockheed Hudson and a Catalina.

Of course, there's no comparison with modern jets in speed, comfort (provided you don't fly economy!) and fuel economy, but I love flying in a DC-3..

Geoff
 
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