Boeing recently unveiled its first fully-assembled 737 MAX 10 passenger aircraft. But you may not have heard much about it. Announcements of new aircraft are traditionally big deals with plenty of press—but the quiet unveiling to employees at Boeing’s Renton, Washington factory took place under the ongoing cloud of the 737 MAX investigations and the global grounding of the 737 MAX fleet.
The MAX 10 is the largest variant of the MAX family at over 143 feet—for comparison, the original 737-100 launched in 1967 was little more than half the length of the MAX 10. Boeing’s new plane will seat 188 to 204 passengers in a two-class configuration and will have a maximum capacity of 230 seats in a single-class layout, which gives the new variant two more seat rows than the MAX 9. To make room for more seats, two extra fuselage barrel sections were added, forward and aft of the midsection.
But as a trade-off for the extra seats, the MAX 10 will also be the plane with the shortest range in the family, at 3,300 nautical miles. However, Boeing boasts that the plane has the lowest seat-mile cost of any single-aisle airplane in history—a figure that will undoubtedly appeal to the airlines whose bottom line has suffered from the shutdown of the 737 MAX fleet.
The 10 will be powered by LEAP-1B engines from CFM International that are already in use in other MAX variants—reducing development and certification time that would be needed for an engine fan with a different diameter.
The 10 is so long that Boeing had to redesign its landing gear, creating a telescoping landing gear to keep the new plane’s tail from scraping the runway during takeoff. The levered landing gear extends up to 9.5 inches on take-off but can still contract during retraction to fit into the existing 737 fuselage’s wheel well. The body contour has also been modified to reduce the risk of tail strikes.
In addition, the automatic landing function will be certified for lower landing flap settings to improve go-around climb performance after icing conditions during the flight.
The plane also features an improved flap design that allows for more approaches and landing at Flaps 40 configuration and a modified maximum landing weight center of gravity that will avoid tail tip.
One of the innovations on the MAX 10 is its distinctive winglet, which Boeing claims is the most efficient ever designed for a commercial plane.
The winglets help direct the air flow over the wing tip. Without a winglet, the air flow will roll up from the high-pressure area beneath the wing to the low-pressure area above it, creating vortices that cause lift-induced drag—reducing the efficiency and effectiveness of the wing. The existing winglet design uses the airflow at the tip of the winglet to create lift; most of the lift is vectored towards the fuselage while a small amount is vectored forward to reduce the drag.
Boeing’s 737 MAX AT winglet takes it a step further. The upper aerofoil continues to create the inward and upward lift. A new lower aerofoil generates vertical lift vectored away from the fuselage and slightly forward. Combined, the two aerofoils further reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency.
The 10’s main competition will be the Airbus A321neo—in fact, Boeing’s press materials make a point of comparing the MAX 10 favorably to the European aircraft. Boeing originally hadn’t planned on making the 10—the MAX 9 was intended to be the largest in the family. But the MAX 9 hasn’t been able to compete with the larger and more modern A321neo, and so Boeing responded with the MAX 10.
“Right now, the A321neo is cleaning Boeing’s clock in that market,” said aerospace analyst George Hamlin of Hamlin Transportation Consulting, noting that the MAX 10 will likely be the last variant of the 737 Boeing produces. “They’ve brought the 737 about as far as they can,” said Hamlin.
Boeing already has more than 550 orders for the MAX 10 from more than 20 airlines—with United Airlines making the biggest commitment, ordering 100 MAX 10s, some of which will replace the airline’s aging Boeing 757-200s used on domestic transcontinental routes.
In comparison, the A321neo had 3,142 firm orders through October 2019.
As Boeing prepares the MAX 10 for certification, the new plane will be subject to the same questions and suspicions about the rest of the MAX family. Will Boeing’s fixes to the troubled MCAS system be enough to make the plane safe? Can the FAA’s review be relied on? Will the MAX 10 have more than just one angle-of-attack sensor?
The airplane is now being subjected to system checks and engine runs and the planemaker anticipates its first test flight in 2020. It is expected to have a price tag of $129.9 million per plane.
When the 737 MAX eventually returns to the skies, its newest family member will have the important task of taking on the A321 neo and restoring some of Boeing’s lost competitiveness. But because of the 737 MAX disasters, it will face a difficult climb to catch its Airbus competitor—and restore public confidence in the Boeing brand.
Read more about the 737 MAX’s problems—which will affect the newest MAX variant— at 737 MAX Senate Hearings Expose Deep Flaws at Boeing.