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Old Feb 19, 2012, 3:26 am
  #31  
BoeingBoy
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: High Point, NC
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Posts: 9,171
One thing is for sure - a replacement for the 737 is probably 10 years or more away. The oldest NG's will be coming up on 20 years old then so the timing would work.

In the meantime, the MAX will use the basic 737NG fuselage with aerodynamic tweaks and possibiliby a taller nose gear. GE claims that it's GenX engine minimizes fuel burn differences by tailoring the fan blade design for the diameter so it's MAX engine will be within 1% of being as efficient as the larger diameter fan Airbus is using for the neo. They point to the 787 and 747-8 versions of the GenX as proof.

In general, I think you're right about the eventual replacement value of the 350 and for shorter term the 332/787 for the 757. First, there's not an airline that has enough variety in it's fleet to pull out a plane with the exact capacity needed on a given day or route round-trip - neither manufacturer builds planes with only 10-20 seat capacity differences. So gaps in capacity of airplanes in a fleet is a given. So not having a replacement the exact same size as the 752/762 is not critical by any means. Then traffic is forecast to generally grow over time no matter whose forecast you use, so a plane that may be bigger than currently needed won't necessarily be too big in 5-10 years even for secondary European cities.

As is the case so much of the time, US' small longer haul fleet causes US to have problems that bigger competitors don't have - given the number of planes involved it's hard to have much variability in size for the wide-body fleet without getting the inefficiency of a small number of several airplane types. With the 330/350, since US seems to be sticking to Airbuses, you're basically looking at 250/300/350 seats for all trans-Atlantic ops and maybe Hawaii once the 752/762's leave the fleet.

As always, merging with a bigger carrier would solve a lot of US' problems, but a bigger carrier wanting to merge with US is less likely.

Jim
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