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By Scott Hamilton
Oct. 27, 2025, © Leeham News: Recent reports that Boeing is working on a new single-aisle aircraft to replace the 737 MAX and a New Midmarket Airplane (NMA), or a version of it, are fundamentally true but vastly overhyped. At a conference in Prague earlier this month, Boeing’s Darren Hulst put a damper on this speculation, but said only that Boeing was “not close” to launching a new airplane.
Concept of the Boeing New Midmarket Aircraft. Credit: Leeham News.
Boeing hasn’t publicly put any dates on entries into service of its new airplanes, whatever these may be. But internally, Boeing is of the belief that its 737 replacement won’t enter service before 2040.
This doesn’t mean that Boeing’s Product Development unit isn’t working on new airplanes in the background. The company must be ready to respond in case some other OEM introduces a new airplane before then.
Airbus’ CEO Guillaume Faury publicly said several times that it will introduce a replacement for the A320neo in 2038. But there are some within Airbus who dispute this, concluding that new technology needed to justify a new airplane won’t be ready until the 2040 decade.
The driving factor is, of course, new engines. But as LNA’s 13-part series about new airplane technology and 7-part series about new production technologies demonstrate, engines aren’t the only technology needed. However, without significant advances in engine technology, none of the others is sufficient to justify a new airplane.
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