THIS could Seriously HURT Aviation!

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There's potentially another factor you haven't mentioned. I think the better you make things, the harder it is to make them better because there's less room for improvement. It's like how a world record gets harder to break every time it's broken because the standard is higher for future competitors.

Sign of a mature technology. Standards to meet. Much higher expectations and much less tolerance for failure.

Loss of trust is an intangible as well. Boeing has been making shady decisions for a while now. I lost a friend in an AH-64 helicopter when the rotor blade separated. This happened because the blade pin rusted out. Boeing had changed the metallurgy of the pins in order to save money. It ended up grounding most of our fleet and we had to decrease inspection times significantly until they could start producing the original blade pins.

Strange that it now takes over a decade to get an aircraft into service because certification standards are stricter, but Boeing is putting up new planes that are crashing and having parts fall off in midair.

Got to work on a 737 max8, and replacing the brakes alone took 3 weeks. The paperwork is CRAZY

Got to correct you on one thing you said. “The 777x is basically a 777 with a couple new bits and new engines” (paraphrasing). 95% of this plane is completely new. All the avionics, the computing platforms, the sensors, power units, including the engines. I have worked on the program for the best part of 8 years.

A321xlr got certified by EASA ❤

the short answer is that the complexity of aircraft has increased faster than the ability to design complex things. it's kind of like with computers: my current computer can run much more complex software at higher speeds than my first computer - yet it takes it longer to load software than my first computer did, because the complexity of the software has also increased.

Five years for Airbus to go from the A321LR/Neo to the A321XLR approval.

The Max shows how rushing things ended in crashes.

Better not be any BETTER HELP sponsorships in this video..

One major problem adding time to design, is that a LOT of the aircraft isn't designed and built by the manufacturer, they are built by OTHER manufacturers. So, say Airbus decides on a new design. They do the initial work, then go to a company that making landing gear, and asks them to design a landing gear for the new plane. That engineering work is already 2-3 years behind the start of the design. At least this is true for other manufacturing. I actually don't know in aerospace (don't work in aerospace), but it's more than likely the same as other industries.

This is the reason why BOOM OVERTURE will never fly. If it takes established manufacturers so long to develop an aircraft , a new start up company has NO chance.

I can't help but think that one factor that slows down new aircraft development is the law of diminishing returns, applied to both economy and performance.

I think there's another factor in play that' are causing these development delays; lack of talent. Years ago, I did an summer internship at a newspaper, The Huntsville Times, in Alabama as a business reporter. For context, Huntsville Alabama has a rich history of Military and Space related research and development. About 130 German scientists from Operation Paper Clip were relocated to Huntsville for the Space program, including Wernher von Braun. Their research in rocket technology is what brought us to the Moon. Having learned this, I asked one of my fellow business reporters, who covered the Redstone Arsenal Military research base, a question. "Why haven't we gone back to the moon?" His answer: America is no longer producing the same level high caliber of scientists today, as the ones the brought us to the moon back then. I believe the same explanation applies to the Aerospace industry, and why clean sheet design development cycles are taking longer now compared to back then. Companies like Boeing are having staffing issues finding enough engineers and scientists to replace the retiring ones who used to build new designs in 4-5 years. As Peter mention in a previous video, there's even a shortage of A&P licensed mechanics to physically build these designs! That's probably the reason why Boeing can't make 757's anymore, not even a Max version.

For your information. The body of the A380 is made from auminium CF triplex and that is produced by Fokker NL. They had experience with CF parts but not of this size. It took them more time than expected to get it right. So Airbus had to wait. And they will experience this with a number of their suppliers. To design the parts and make them is a huge step.

My take on this is that the companies are largely lost in the weeds, trying to make more efficient and larger planes to the point where it's outrageously cumbersome. The best analogy would be shipping. What we need are passenger ferries. What they want to build are some sort of hydrofoil cruise ship that can go 100+ knots. Bleeding edge technology when small and simple works. We don't need NEW jets, we need the same old jets, just NEW ( as in same thing fresh off the factory line, to replace the 20 year old ones that are worn out). We see this with poor Southwest. They need something simple to maintain and fly, like the jets of old, or something smaller and more efficient ( Basically a MD-80/90 ) and everyone is furiously trying to squeeze out that last few percent. Or go with things like flying wings. For what? Bragging rights? Being able to fly around the world on one load of fuel? Most regional carriers don't even use more than 500nm on most flights, and maybe 3x that on their longer routes. 150-200 million for a jet that can do everything versus 40-50 million for gets the job done, by basically updating the existing design. Another good example of this was the VW Beetle. It was still being made in Mexico around 20 years ago, just updated with things like a CD player and air conditioning, and some more modern touches. Eventually it died out, but versions were being made, new, for 50+ years as it worked and filled a market segment. The Toyota Stout is also kind of like this. Super basic but gets the job done. But we get.. Yep, let's all embrace EVs and bleeding edge tech to get to the grocery store.

The basic industry of aircraft design, development, and production is two companies. These companies are very large managed by risk aversion due to the bean counter mentality. The company’s management looks at their profit and doesn’t want to risk the big salaries and bonuses this produces. Also, this type of management chooses to reduce their technical and engineering as a way to control costs as they only need them during the design of the product through production. But as Boeing has shown these companies always push the limits of quality because it adds nothing to the bottom line than cost. Quality takes little ime if it is instill in the company to have quality independent of the bottom line, it should be above bean counters, manufacturing and management in general. The result is the company doesn’t have to go back time after time to ‘fix’ issues you shouldn’t be seeing. Thus it takes more time to get an aircraft certified because they take the short cut and pay in money and time over the design cycle. 4 years become 10 years because of risk aversion and poor quality control.

I work in the automotive industry. It happened to be involved also in Fisker ocean project. They reduced the development timeline to only 2 years. Usually, it will take 4 to 5 years to develop a new model even if you are an experienced car manufacturer. You know the outcome of Fisker Ocean.