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Boeing 737


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:D The trusty pocket jet has been part of aviation's life for forty years now.  5000 airframes built and still another 1200 on order!  As you read this, 1200 737's are in the air while landing and taking off continuosly 24/7 What a record!

Many say it's the Douglas DC3/C47 as the greatest, yet it was by default as 97% that were built were for the military.

Only now are the airforces around the world taking advantage of this versitile airframe!

With clearly no end in sight, and for that matter a replacement on the drawing board, this airliner will see it's fiftieth birthday while still in production.  Something the DC3 could never claim!

Airbus is still in catch up mode.

Is this the greatest airliner ever?

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I think the A380 is going to be better.

I hate the pressurization of the Airbuses.  Besides, right now, how many airports can handle the A380?  I think no more than ten worldwide.  

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, and we've discussed it at length before,  will be, not the greatest, but the best and most efficiently built.  The sales numbers already prove it.  It has exceeded Boeing's projections.

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:D The A380 will certainly be the biggest but the 737 has such a headstart that no other airliner will catch it saleswise, even the A320 is still 2000 units behind and that gap isn't closing.

The 737 designation may stay with the type as the post 787 generation of 100 - 200 seater is developed (with a slightly wider body) thus allowing Boeing to continue with it's record run. I'm still amazed that the 737 has developed so much as to swallow up the 727 and 757 programmes.  With range now the moniker, with the present NG series, the post 787 generation will absolutly knock out the competition and be the perfect complement to the 787 and 747-8.

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I absolutely hate flying in a 737 - even more than the Airbus A-320.  It is the most cramped plane in the air IMHO.  I usually check prior to making reservations to make sure I am not on one.

That said, it is truly one of the biggest success stories ever.  It's versatility and flying capabilities have made it the workhorse of Boeing for more than 39 years and there isn't any end in site.

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LA, it probably depends on the airline. The new Jetblue A320's have more legroom, hiproom and shoulder room space than a Delta B757. Most of the B737's that I've flown in I agree, are cramped.

I totally agree though that the B737's are currently the greatest airliners in the world. It will take a lot more years to for Airbus to at least catch up with it.

And with the very successful launch of the B787 Dreamliner, exceeding Boeing sales expectations, Boeing has another product or platform that they can bank upon to develop newer planes.

It is like Toyota developing the Camry car platform and building SUV's of all sizes, Lexus vehicles and other Toyota cars following the same platform. Toyota was very succesful with it and Boeing could be using the same strategy.

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I'd have to say thatthe 737 is one fo the greatest aircraft butnot the greatest. That honor will go to the 747 for me. A380 will never be in the same league as the 747. The 737 was not expected to sell very much to begin with and for it to have reached 5000 and counting is really an feat for itself. I didn't like my 737 ride with UA as well but the plane to date is continuing to sell like hot cakes. AT present whatwillbring Boeing even further is the 777 and the 787 line.
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  • 5 years later...

Boeing Unveils New Winglet Design for 737 Max

737maxadvancedwinglet.2.jpg

Boeing unveiled a new “advanced technology winglet” design for the 737 Max on Wednesday, saying that it will provide up to an additional 1.5-percent fuel-burn advantage on top of the 10- to 12-percent improvement already advertised for the re-engined narrowbody.

Michael Teal, 737 Max chief project engineer, said the design combines the raked wingtip feature of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 747-8 with a “dual feather” concept winglet consisting of an upper and a lower piece.

“To get more efficiency with just an upper winglet, you have to add more height to the top the winglet. This adds weight and negates any additional benefit,” Teal explained in a teleconference. “The lower part of the winglet lets us, in essence, cheat a bit on span by balancing the effective span increase uniquely between the upper and the lower parts. This makes the system more efficient without adding more weight, thereby reducing drag and improving the overall fuel burn. The dual-feather winglet creates the fuel-burn improvement at cruise, giving a total fuel-burn improvement of up to five-and-a-half percent relative to having no winglet at all.”

If realized in service, the percentage gain of the new Boeing winglet would exceed the 3.5-percent fuel-burn improvement Airbus claims for the A320 equipped with new “Sharklet” wingtips.

The dual-feather winglet design is Boeing’s intellectual property. The company currently does not plan to retrofit it on 737NGs equipped with blended winglets from Seattle-based Aviation Partners, said Beverly Wyse, 737 program general manager. “We may change that decision in the future, but right now we’re just focused on introducing it on the Max,” she said.

The Aviation Partners Boeing (APB) joint venture now supplies blended winglets for 737NGs, 757s and the 767-300ER. “We’ll continue to have a strong relationship with APB. They will continue to be our partner for the winglets we have on the 737 Next Generation as well as the 757 and the 767,” Wyse said.

http://www.ainonline...-design-737-max

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  • 2 years later...
  • 11 months later...

:( A sad day for NZ aviation history...Air New Zealand formally retires it's last two 737s.

No domestic Boeing 737 in the sky for the first time since 1968! (

Always a stalwart since the original domestic airline National Airways Corporation introduced the type into service way back in the socialist era...A controversy at the time as it wasn't British made!!! :blink:

They chose the slightly larger -200 model over the about to fly 737-100 that, unusally, Lufthansa was launch customer. Boeing deliberately held three early slots on the Renton production line, so confident were they in snaring the NZ order.

The first flew into Wellington in September 1968, all the Government was there to welcome it home. Wellington was chosen as this was and still is the most difficult airport to fly in and out of and even though it hadn't flown, Boeing said the design would be a perfect fit over the smaller but equally agile British built BAC 1-11. It proved to be the right decision.

Surprisingly NAC and, later Air NZ (after NAC and Air NZ merged into an all in one airline) only ever operated variations of two types, the 737-200, 737-200ADV, and the workhorse 737-300 which was also used on Trans Tasman and Pacific Island routes.

In a bizzare twist of fate, the three original Lufthansa 737-100s showed up in 1988 to launch Ansett NZ services after deregulation. Over time, QANTAS and Virgin operated the type on domestic services when they tried to crack the Air NZ dominated market.

In 2001 Air NZ announced the first Airbus A320 order, originally for Pacific and trans Tasman routes...then after slipping a few on domestic peaktime services, found them a more economical fit and ordered more.

The 737s were slowly phased out as more A320s arrived.

Gonna miss those wickedly tight take offs and eye popping landings from those smaller airports the 737s used to operate to. :(

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...don't fly them much these days but always a fun ride....tight is exactly the right word for those fat little tanks.

...don't fly them much these days but always a fun ride....tight is exactly the right word for those fat little tanks.

:D The dash-200 Guppies were the most fun as they only needed 1400meters to operate. If you got a window down the back you got to see the engine bucket reversers open on landing. NAC's 737s were so early in the day they originally had 727 clamshell brakes. Also used to cause those massive soot trails across the sky. The retrofitted buckets allowed a filter system to go in as well.

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Lufthansa is currently retiring its 737s, too, by the way. And of course, since Lufthansa was the launch customer of the 737, this will be the end of an era even more. I remember my occasional journeys in Lufthansa's and Hapag Lloyd's (now TUIfly) 737s fondly - they really were a workhorse and it was always impressive when that little flying piggy powered up for take off.

But somehow I've grown to be more of an Airbus man over the years, mostly due to the strong shift towards Airbus at many European and German airlines during the past ten years. Air Berlin (the airline I most regularly fly with) will also retire its 737s until 2017 and then have an Airbus-only fleet (added by some Dash-8s for regional traffic), Lufthansa will have only Airbusses as well (apart from the 747s and of course the Embraer and CRJ jets), Condor still has a mixed 757/767/A320/A321 fleet (for reasons which I actually don't understand, since such a mixed fleet proved very inefficient for LTU and later Air Berlin), Germanwings and Eurowings fly only Airbusses and CRJs as well and Germania already has a mixed fleet of A319s, A321s and 737s. In the end, TUIfly, SunExpress Deutschland and Germania will be the only 737 operators in Germany, and they only play a medium or minor role in German passenger traffic.

I'm not really sad about it, I have to say - I think that the A320 family simply offers the same reliability as the 737 while offering more modern technology, comfort and efficiency. They have grown to become the new workhorse and maybe they'll surpass the 737 sales in the future. And for all the right reasons.


Addendum: I just saw that Germania will retire its 737s until 2020, too. So TUIfly and SunExpress Deutschland will be the only 737 operators in Germany in a few years' time.

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Still 737 flights into NZ. Qantas, Virgin Australia and Fiji Airways the main users. Jetstar and Air NZ both now A320 domestic operators.

Interesting that the 737 was designed to get in and out of Templehoff as the short bodied 727-100 was a smidgen too big. At the same time moved the engines to under the wing for ease of maintenance...something the DC 9, a equally excellent type, couldn't compare.

NAC chose the 737 over the DC9 because the t tail airliner couldn't handle the difficult Wellington airport circuit. Douglas wasn't willing to adjust the flap configuration on it's not so rakish mainwings. Yet the BAC 1-11 did have the configuration needed and handled well...it was just too small at 80 seats, NAC wanted 95 at five abreast. As the 737 was still a drawing in 1966, Boeing sent a 727 with the proposed flap configuration and proved itself. Deal done, and later NAC took the Pax up to 112 at six abreast seating layout.

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So you seem to be quite an aviation buff, right? This is a passion that has rekindled for me a few months ago when I re-installed the Microsoft Flight Simulator on my computer ;) Do you use a flight simulator, too?

:D

Haa! Yeah, got FS 2000 somewhere...and err, you can still fly over Manhattan with a couple of certain buildings still there.

Do still have my PPL. Rated twin engine.

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  • 2 weeks later...

:D

Haa! Yeah, got FS 2000 somewhere...and err, you can still fly over Manhattan with a couple of certain buildings still there.

Do still have my PPL. Rated twin engine.

I see! So that's where your interest in aviation originates. Before the FSX, I had FS 2000 too, but it didn't run properly on the computer I had back then. You should try the FSX or (which seems to be the newest fad) Prepared 3D v.3, a modification of FSX. It's really great fun to take some virtual flights there.

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