Aircraft

Boeing 737 MAX gets off the drawing board

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Boeing employees have started building the first 737 MAX on schedule
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737 MAX wing skin panels and stringers being loaded into Boeing's into the new panel assembly line that uses automation to drill holes and install fasteners
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Artist’s rendering of the 737 MAX 8
Boeing
Boeing employees have started building the first 737 MAX on schedule
Boeing
According to Boeing, the new winglet design contributes about 1 percent to the airplane’s efficiency on 500-nmi missions
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Assembly is underway on Boeing's first 737 MAX. Due to enter service in 2017, the new single-aisle airplane promises to deliver reduced operating costs, enhanced cabin comfort, more cabin-luggage space and significantly better fuel economy than the Next-Generation 737 it will replace.

Assembly of the wings of the first flight test airplane began in Renton, Washington, last week using the company's new semi-automated panel assembly line.

The 737 MAX family will be made up of three variants, all of which will feature Boeing's new "Sky Cabin" interior. This means larger overhead bins that don't protrude out as far, variable cabin lighting and a "logical" button layout for reading lights that's designed to cut down on accidental calls to the attendants. According to Boeing, the ambiance is also boosted by windows that are 20 percent larger than the closest rival – the A320neo.

Artist’s rendering of the 737 MAX 8
Boeing

The aircraft boasts reduced emissions and noise, increased range and 20 percent lower fuel consumption. Maximum range is now put at more than 3,500 nmi/6,482 km – a jump of up to 580 nmi/1,074 km on the Next-Generation 737 – while the fall in fuel consumption is the result of aerodynamic improvements like new "up-and-down" winglets and a revised tail design, along with the introduction of the more efficient CFM LEAP-1B engine.

The 737 MAX is slated for delivery in 2017. Boeing says it has racked up more than 2,700 orders for the plane to date.

Source: Boeing

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3 comments
MonacoJim
So Boeing has a semi-automated panel assembly line? Just catching up with Airbus then? Airbus has many automated systems, more reliable, more consistant and safer work, both in terms of finished product and worker job quality attention. However, they are both still pushing a passenger cylinder through the air with the wings supplying the lift, why havent they developed a wing shaped passenger container like the flying wing? Is it going to be the Russians or the Chinese that are to be left to push the passenger flight design envelope?
boomer
A single aisle passenger air craft,..how many seats does a window passenger have to get past to the aisle if going to the rest-room? Sight unseen I'm not sure this is a good idea...
christopher
And the most important number that's missing is... leg room.
I bet we're crammed in even tighter. I remember the old days, when I could sleep on my tray table. My nose hit the lady-in-front's hair when I tried that last week. I can't even sit with my legs together anymore - my pelvis-to-knee length exceeds the seat-back to tray-table distance!.
Planes are rated for weight - not size. They should make them bigger, so they can fit the *same* number of people in them, more comfortably!!!!
Longer and slimmer is also way more efficient too, FWIW.
And that's not even *starting* on the stupidity of making us sit upright all night, when even last century busses used to have beds for those trips...