The 737 has a feature almost no other new plane have: you can order it with a internal staircase so people can leave the plane without a specialized airport terminal.
This feature requires the plane to keep its current overall shape, otherwise the staircase thingy would not work.
So to keep this feature, while putting a bigger engine on the plane, they had to move the engine forward, and change its shape too, otherwise the engine wouldn't fit between the wing and the ground.
Then THAT caused the necessity of MCAS.
So long story short: wanting to keep backward compatiblity with the 737 staircase, led to the engine hack, that then to maintain backward compatiblity with the handling led to the MCAS hack...
So, it IS a 737, in the sense they kept the staircase and to do that ended needing the MCAS...
The other option would have been abandon the staircase entirely and make a taller plane, this would allow a bigger engine with no handling changes, but although this would remain a 737 from handling perspective, it would not be a 737 from the airports perspective: it would need to remodel the airports to install bridges or purchase of ladder trucks.
The other option would have been abandon the staircase entirely and make a taller plane, this would allow a bigger engine with no handling changes, but although this would remain a 737 from handling perspective, it would not be a 737 from the airports perspective: it would need to remodel the airports to install bridges or purchase of ladder trucks.
No that would not be the major problem. Specifically since practically any airport nowadays has the infrastructure to service such a plane. This was quite different 50 years ago.
The reason why they couldn't have heightened it was that a new type certification would have been required and Boeing wanted to avoid exactly that at all cost.
Just skipping the staircase it not enough. To make the plane taller it needs a new landing gear. But that doesn't fit into the existing gear wells. So now you need to redesign the gear wells. But the gear nearly touch in the middle already. So you neet to make them taller, and attach them to the wing further out. Which the Wing can' take. So you need to redesign the wing. At this point you better just admit that the 737 design from 1964 is at the end of its life.
TIL: The airstairs are still an option of most (all?) 737 variants. RyanAir appears to have them on part of the fleet. And many BBJ have them, as not all general aviation terminals have jetways.
I assumed the stairs were not longer installed, and the height of the 737 was just an anachronism.
That landing gear only extends when the nose gear is off the ground. It's really just to prevent a tail strike. An alternate choice would be a little extra wheel up on the tail, as was done with the Concorde.
The 737 has a feature almost no other new plane have: you can order it with a internal staircase so people can leave the plane without a specialized airport terminal.
This feature requires the plane to keep its current overall shape, otherwise the staircase thingy would not work.
So to keep this feature, while putting a bigger engine on the plane, they had to move the engine forward, and change its shape too, otherwise the engine wouldn't fit between the wing and the ground.
Then THAT caused the necessity of MCAS.
So long story short: wanting to keep backward compatiblity with the 737 staircase, led to the engine hack, that then to maintain backward compatiblity with the handling led to the MCAS hack...
So, it IS a 737, in the sense they kept the staircase and to do that ended needing the MCAS...
The other option would have been abandon the staircase entirely and make a taller plane, this would allow a bigger engine with no handling changes, but although this would remain a 737 from handling perspective, it would not be a 737 from the airports perspective: it would need to remodel the airports to install bridges or purchase of ladder trucks.