Beginning of end of the 737?
It seems to me that the problem is more fundamental than that. The 1st 737 rolled of f the line in 1967. If you look at it, the engines are very low to the ground compared to modern jets. This means that unlike the 320, they had far less room to fit new high bypass turbofans.
They had two choices. Total redesign or a fudge. The fudge involved moving the engines forward, and then fix the design compromise with a software to maintain stability. A new design would of been expensive, take far to long and virtually given the short haul market to airbus so they went with plan B. To cut costs and design time even more they short cut certification by pretending it was a minor upgrade when in fact the redesign had vastly changed the flight characteristics, hidden by the safety software which introduced a single point of failure.
However Boeing want to spin it, the fact is the Boeing 737 design is reaching the end of its life. Yes the present 737's have virtually nothing in common with the original models in terms of control, construction, and engines, but it still shares a basically common wing and engine layout and basically you have gone as far as you can with that
Biting the hand that feeds IT
