Remembering A 797 Airplane

Boeing a long time ago suggest building the "Middle of the Market" airplane. It would be somewhere between a 737 and 787 aircraft, tending towards a dual aisle composition. What happened? It's not been announced, nor has the press covered anything 797 for a few months and that's just fine with Boeing. It has said all it's going to say for some time. Lessons learned from the 787 programs allowed Airbus to dampen Boeing's aspirations as it quickly announced its A-350 just after the 7E7 came to the Boeing show and tell at an airshow near Paris.

The silence for the 797 ideas is deafening. It almost looks like Boeing has purposefully changed its tactics towards Airbus by not announcing and let Airbus sell copious numbers of A-321's over the next five years. The suspicion grows it is building a 797 in secret from its CAD machines. The computers are sophisticated enough to design and fly a concept on a big computer screen, in some kind of simulation alter reality. Now Boeing has probably already done a 797 computer mock-up with its vast proven technologies, so the trial and error portion has been skipped. Boeing just needs to build a flying example in a warehouse near the space needle.

Boeing has lined up at least 500 orders from customers loyal to anything Boeing. Naming "Launch Customers" are a bigger problem than any engine selection. About getting an engine is another step progression. Boeing has the Leap for the 737 and the GE for its 787. Those companies are not standing still as Boeing would be in 40,000 to 50,000 thrust range for a super lean burning and quieter engine than what is currently flying. Selecting an engine is as difficult as selecting a launch customer.

The process remains behind closed doors and Boeing will not utter a thing until it can hang an engine on a prototypical 797. It already has a plan to stuff the "Bus" with all things Boeing in a plug and play fashion from its design Bureau, but it needs time for its ultimate strategy of gaining five years on Airbus from its order campaign. When Boeing announces the 797 it will be in Paris and it just might fly-in for a look-see, for all the customers to be amazed.

Airbus will counter but it will be five years too late. The airplane "other-shoe" will have dropped. The only way Boeing can steal the market back is through a surprise reveal at the biggest stage. But that is for risk takers and Boeing is risk adverse except if it called a 787. However,  the 797 is put back into its box for another day. Boeing is on a rampant errand on a white steed and it will lance the windmill one more time with its 797. Risk aversion is job one on the CAD machine. Once all 797 problems have been shredded the announcement will follow allowing Airbus some time in a thoughtful repose for a reflexive move. The wind won't shift for Airbus because that lance is stuck firm tilting its aspiration out of the picture. Don Quixote has a plan.