I find that hard to believe. The industry cares about fuel efficiency and a clean sheet design would have been even more fuel efficient. You're saying that if they could snap their fingers and make a clean sheet design tomorrow that blows the pants off the A320neo, nobody would buy it? I don't think so.

What is probably true is that traditionally all Boeing customers wanted a more fuel efficient narrowbody sooner than Boeing could create a clean sheet design. But at that point, Boeing should have just realized that there was no way they could do it safely and told them no. And wasn't the Y1 supposed to enter service in 2020 (as estimated in 2011) anyway? Would have been a hell of a lot better for PR if they could have done this without the crashes and deaths and groundings.