Boeing's Loveable 757

It’s the early 1980s. While the duopoly against Airbus was not yet established, Boeing had strong competition in the commercial jet aircraft sector from McDonnell- Douglas, and for a while, Lockheed’s L-1011 Tristar. Innovation was key to staying ahead of the competition; and the key advantage with Boeing’s 757, the direct successor to the 727, was dropping the engine count from three to two. Production stopped in 2004, but the 757’s new purchase market had already declined to niche markets after September 2001, which pushed multiple US air carriers into bankruptcy. The 757 was known as the “racecar” of the skies, as it was overpowered due to the lack of a suitable sized engine on the 1980’s market. When oil prices steadily increased in the 2002-2008 period, airline executives could not justify purchasing more high-performance, overpowered, fuel-guzzling aircraft that pilots loved to fly. Some traits: It was the largest aircraft that can service Washington Reagan and New York Laguardia airports, both in the top-25 busiest airports in the US. Other aircraft of similar size require more runway length for takeoff than these airports have. The aircraft had performance for high-altitude takeoff in South America and Central Asia. Higher cruising altitude over 40,000 feet, which was only surpassed by the supersonic Concorde. This allowed for avoiding all types of weather turbulence. Year-round non-stop flights between the Eastern US and Western Europe, with 160-180 seats serving “long, thin routes”. I flew one from New York to Edinburgh, Scotland in 2007; and Iceland Air makes good use of the aircraft model today, Transcontinental flights to the West Coast, allowing improved legroom options over the 737. For example, United regularly used the aircraft on its Washington, DC to San Francisco route. Oh, and the “turn left for first class” routine, as the forward boarding door was located some distance aft of the cockpit. Around 2017, Boeing appeared ready to proceed with designing a new 757, under Project Yellowstone, sometimes dubbed the “797” or the “New Mid Market Aircraft”. The airline, however, diverted its efforts to fixing production of the revolutionary, and larger, 787 aircraft, which itself was a fresh slate 15 years in the making; and releasing the 737 Max, the fourth iteration and transcontinental version of what was once a regional jet. I’ve made big business predictions before on the blog, one of which was a major corporation moving into vacant office space immediately south of the Pentagon. Both Amazon and Boeing did so. This one might have been a napkin sketch rather than a blog post, but I felt that Norfolk International Airport was ready for a regional airline hub. Breeze Airways entered the picture seven years after Vision Airlines failed in their attempt from nearby Newport News. What if Boeing shrank the 787, a two-engine aircraft, to fit the aging 757’s market, using a common type rating for both the flagship and miniature models? With competition from Airbus in this size range, only a quarter of orders for the 787 have been for the 787-800 variety, with 230 seats. Boeing still needs to work through its backlog of orders for this jet. But shrinking the plane will cover the mid-market gap that the 737 Max can’t fill.