Check 6 Revisits: 7J7, Boeing’s Lost Airliner

Aviation Week editors Guy Norris, Steve Trimble and Christine Boynton are joined by former Boeing 7J7 program manager Peter Morton to delve into the program. 

Boeing never built the 7J7, but its legacy continues to be felt to this day. Listen in to hear how technology once studied for the highly advanced program could re-emerge on the company’s next new airplane almost 40 years later.

Designed in an era of spiraling fuel costs, the 7J7 was ahead of its time. The program marked a profound change in the way Boeing did business and designed its airplanes. Morton, who served as director of cost and program management for the 7J7, provides an insider's account and shares his unique perspective on the effort.

Check 6 Revisits delves into Aviation Week's more than 100-year archive. Subscribers can explore our archive here and read key Aviation Week articles on the 7J7 here: 

• Boeing Seeks Automated Design Process For Full Digital Definition Of 7J7
• Boeing Studies Closely Spaced Launch Of 7J7 Aircraft Programs
• Boeing Redirects R&D Efforts To Improve Today's Transports

Don't miss a single episode of the award-winning Check 6. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Discover all of our podcasts on our Apple Podcasts channel or at aviationweek.com/podcasts.

Transcript

Christine Boynton:

Welcome to Check 6 Revisits, where we comb through more than a century of Aviation week and space technology coverage. On this podcast, our editors explore pivotal industry moments and achievements of the past while considering how they might relate to the events of today.

[RECORDING SNIPPET OF Peter Morton]

...I'd like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate each one of you for all that you've done while working on the 7J7 program. And thank you for taking some risks and for having the courage to propose innovative ways of doing business. Congratulations on your considerable accomplishments. Through your dedication, willingness to be part of this vision, you have advanced the company far beyond where it was. We've learned to relate to each other in new ways. Through co-location of engineering and operations personnel, through multidisciplinary problem solving teams, we solve problems that never would've been resolved. You've set new standards for communication. You've advanced the technology of computerized design by going beyond what even the manufacturer of the CATIA system envisioned. You've learned to ask tough questions and then seek the answers, causing all of us to continually confront our own methodologies and biases. You've made many improvements in the quality of how we design our products and refine technology that others are still dreaming about. Your achievements will not be lost. We have no intention of giving up the progress you made nor of conceding our technological advantages in the market.

Christine Boynton:

You've just briefly heard from Peter Morton, who during a 42-year career at Boeing held a variety of roles supporting programs including the 737, 747, 757, and 767. Also, the co-inventor of EICAS, Morton served as director of cost and program management for Boeing's 7J7 program. Despite the fact that the 7J7 was never built, its legacy continues to be felt to this day and marked a profound change in the way the company did business and designed its airplanes starting with most importantly the triple seven. I'm your host, Christine Boynton, Aviation Week senior editor for Air Transport in the Americas and today Peter joins myself and Aviation Week defense editor Steve Trimble and Aviation Week Senior Editor, Guy Norris. We've teased a bit about the end of the program, but Steve, can you kick us off at the beginning?

Steve Timble:

Right. So this is a very exciting podcast topic to talk about because we're talking about of course, the 7J7. This was a concept that Boeing came up with back in the 1980s that they, as we're going to hear, we're extremely serious about. They spent over $500 million in 1980s dollars to try to bring this program into fruition. This was their initial response. This was their knee-jerk response to what was becoming the competitive threat of the Airbus A320. And it wasn't just the re-engine 737 MAX or an improved 737 Classic and make it the 737NG. It was an all-new clean sheet aircraft. And it wasn't just an all-new clean sheet aircraft promising 20% better fuel burn or something like that. This was going for a knockout blow against Airbus going for a 45% fuel burn reduction compared to an A320 powered by a V2500 engines.

It was packed with all new kinds of technologies from the structures, to the flight deck, to the flight controls, and of course to the propulsion system. And it represented a new way of doing business with Boeing. They had brought in foreign suppliers on previous programs, especially Japan with the 767 program. But this time they expanded even beyond that and invited Japan and Japanese industry to perform a new level of risk-sharing partnership on the 7J7, as well as several other companies as they were trying to play this competitive international industrial game with Airbus by locking up Japanese industry, partnering with Saab on this program, partnering with Hawker de Havilland in Australia, Fokker in the Netherlands. They were all involved in this at one point. And that also is how we get the name 7J7, although we're going to hear that J, which outwardly Boeing told people it was about Japan, inwardly Boeing had a different name for it, and we will hear a different meaning for that J.

So yeah, I have studied this program quite a bit. I'm the defense editor now, but I've covered commercial aircraft for a long time and it just struck me that this program was so important and such a missed opportunity for Boeing when I think back on it. But at the same time, I also wonder almost what were they thinking? They were trying to bring in something like a new kind of propulsion system that was just beyond anything anybody had imagined or had tested at that time in flight. And is still beyond the reach of commercial aviation technology. So Guy, why don't you talk about that. This propulsion system. This all new propulsion system that they were talking about bringing into service by 1992 on what was the original 7J7 configuration?

Guy Norris:

Yeah. Thanks Steve. You know what? You mentioned a missed opportunity for Boeing. And in a way, of course, yes, they couldn't take that amazing giant leap at the time, but at the same time, it was a cultural turning point for the company. It really laid the foundations for the enormously successful triple seven program and in that cultural change. And it also began to open up Boeing to the beginnings, the earliest technology readiness level research for all of these technologies, including ultimately open rotor or open fan, which now here we are as Christine mentioned, almost 40 years later, beginning to look at seriously for the next generation. So yes, it never happened. Yes, in that respect it was a missed opportunity. But on the other hand, it gave the 737 another few decades ... Another 10,000, 737 were produced and that sort of thing.

So anyway, you can look at this so many different ways it's fascinating. But looking at the propulsion system, yes, you're right. GE, Aerospace and Safran today working on the RISE program through CFM, which is the open fan. Today's the 21st century version of what was being studied way back then. And of course then it was the GE36, which Boeing selected for the 7J7 over the competing Pratt and Allison design. Mostly because they could see its potential, but there were so many unknowns. The noise, for example, the egg beater noise that we heard at air shows for those old enough to remember it in real life. The worry about what would happen with all those whirling blades, what would happen if they came off. So here we are decades later, a lot of the technology that we've seen put into this concept is about to probably pay off. Particularly in noise reduction. NASA spent,  ... And in Europe too. Collectively there was a lot of research done in the past 20 years to try and reduce that noise, and they've got to the point where they think they've cracked a nut on that. So yeah, it's going to be fascinating. Let's dive into this. There's so much to discuss.

Christine Boynton:

So Peter, thank you for joining us today. We're really excited to have you here to talk about the 7J7 and to of kick off our conversation, I wonder if as director of cost and program management for this program, can you just give us the context of what it was like to be involved in this project at the very beginning?

Peter Morton:

Well, this obviously kicked me down memory lane, and I do have a file cabinet that had a bunch of stuff I wasn't supposed to bring home. And so I've looked it all over and my gosh, if you were writing a book, a possible title would be The Jet Transport That Almost Was because we were terribly serious about this. And it actually launched in I think very late '84. Jim Johnson was assigned as the leader. And on my Boeing records, which I'm looking at right now, it says, I left the program in 1987. Our intention was to certify in 1992. And I've dug up everything including the memo that Jim wrote to all of the employees in 1987 saying, okay, well we are closing down the program, but nothing is lost. And I can read you some excerpts from that during this meeting if you'd like. Because he made the comment that he's taking with him everything he learned and he encourages everybody on the program, which was about a thousand people then to do likewise.

And I know I did. And Alan Mulally and Murray Booth did. Alan specifically did onto the 777 program, which I refer to as Boeing's Camelot. And part of the reason it did what it did was because so many of the airplane technologies that were selected for the 777 were let's say test driven on the J7. And so many of the process technologies that we were fooling around with and tried out on the J7 were part of the 777 program. Things like design build teams, which the academics call concurrent engineering, which means the people who have to build what you design are sitting at the design table with you. The old engineering tradition is here's the drawing and they throw it over the fence to manufacturing and say, "I dare you to build it." And the manufacturing people are mumbling about how engineers never have to live with the product of their sins.

And on the 7J7, we created 50 design build teams. We actually had varying levels of success depending on the culture established by the leaders of the DBTs. And about three quarters of the way through the program, the 767 folks, the sales department sold a 767 to British Airways with Rolls-Royce engines. And there had been no such thing before that. And they were short of resources and they were hunting around on how to outsource the design. And the 7J7 folks said, try us. So our propulsion engineering group actually used ... I don't remember if it was CATIA or what previous methodology to actually design and release all of the drawings for the 767 Rolls-Royce power package, which was certainly not a million parts like an airplane is. It was probably eight or 10,000 parts. But it tested the idea of design build teams, digital pre-assembly, no mock-ups, and all of the things that we were envisioning as the way a 7J7 would be built. And that Rolls-Royce package for the 67 went together just beautifully. So we had a lot of confidence in everything perhaps except the unducted fan. And there the mysteries of what would the acoustic signature be? What was the future of noise regulation?

We were at stage three, but the tea leaves suggested that they would be tougher, at least in some parts of the world. And we did fly the engine on a 727, and I believe Douglas flew it on a DC9 and it worked. But then I think also there was a pause in the petroleum scarcity history, which is a checkered story all by itself. And so some of the motivation went away when fuel burn was no longer 40% of direct operating costs. So with all that said, we never built the airplane. I think it was the most fantastic laboratory we could have put together for the triple seven. Everybody on the J7 was absolutely convinced, including Jim, we were going to do this thing. So there was nobody thinking we were in a sandbox playing around with ideas. We thought we were laying the groundwork for something we would live with through 1992 and then beyond. I don't know what else you want to say by way of introduction. Go ahead, Steve.

Steve Timble:

Well, yeah, if you don't mind. That was fantastic by the way. It's so fascinating. When you're starting out ... I think it was SAS that brought the proposal from what I've read or started the discussions about this type of airplane. But was Boeing's mindset going into this that we can bury Airbus with this? Or were you so concerned about Airbus at that point?

Peter Morton:

I think the very idea might've crossed our mind. We keep looking for that shuttle, or at least we did back in those days. The idea of building an airplane, which was a discontinuous stream and evolution of airplane technologies was very appealing to Boeing. It was consistent with our history. So the SAS was one of our prospective launch customers and probably one of the most aggressive ones. But there were others. I found in my files that Tom Lindberg, who was head of marketing, made reference to quite a large number of customer meetings where we would gather the customers together and talk about technology.

We were not only interested in the cost side, but we were interested in the revenue side. And so we built two full scale mock-ups. One single aisle and one twin aisle. And we would go out on the street and find people who you could pay a little bit of money to and have them volunteer to sit in one of these things for four or five, six hours and eat airline food and then fill out extensive surveys. That was a pretty entertaining part of the business. And those mock-ups, we could adjust seat width, aisle width, body width, the whole thing was quite flexible.

Steve Timble:

You mentioned the propulsion technology. I'll let Guy go into that because that and the big shining feature, but there were so many other major technology challenges. You're looking at aluminum-lithium, which I eventually saw turn up on C series or A220 now. Composites, of course. It was extensively using composites like we saw in 787 decades later. I think it was electro hydrostatic actuators.

Peter Morton:

Don't forget DATAC, which is ARINC 629. And don't forget, fly-by-wire. I have one very embarrassing artist's conception of the 7J7 flight deck because the darn thing includes desks and not a side stick, a center stick. And we went out and did research on control inputs on displays on fly-by-wire control laws using that ugliest airplane in the world. What's it called? It was a Cornell Aeronautical Laboratories thing. It had a chin with an extra cockpit in it, and I'll probably remember the name of it about midnight tomorrow. There it is.

Christine Boynton:

Steve's got a picture of it.

Peter Morton:

Yeah. So Christine, would you agree with my description of that?

Christine Boynton:

It's interesting. Yeah, I will.

Peter Morton:

It's not a thing of beauty.

Steve Timble:

It's like an Convair NC-131H Total-in-Flight Simulator by Calspan.

Christine Boynton:

It's unique.

Peter Morton:

Calspan. So the GE versus whose idea? Well, it was clear from quite a long time before that that bypass ratio was the key to reducing fuel burn. And when you go from six or eight as a maximum with ad ducted engine to 25 or 35 with an unducted fan, some cynics will say, "Holy smoke. That looks like a thing called a turboprop." And there were some turboprop concepts with more than just four blades. But it was a very challenging design. And GE and Boeing both collaborated on trying to bring it to some level of maturity.

There was concern about noise, there was concern about maintainability, there was concern about a blade release, which is why the engine was in the back of the airplane. And it was a pusher, but there were tractor concepts also with gears as opposed to just linkage through the flow, which is what the GE concept was. Remember, GE had a jet engine on the Convair 990 in which the fan was not linked to the main shaft. It was a separate aerodynamic or thermodynamic fluid dynamic entity. So GE had done that thinking about decoupling the device that's going to be used for propulsion, which is the fan from the device that's generating the gas, which is the inner core. And how many years later are we now looking at an unducted fan now with Stator vanes with variable instead of counter-rotating? So we're still ready to take that risk maybe.

Guy Norris:

Well, yeah, and you're right, Peter. In fact, we're going to delve into that a little bit later. One of the interesting aspects ... And you're quite right, was obviously Allison and Pratt and Whitney had this alternate design which did use a gear system. A 13 to one reduction gearbox, in fact, to try and convert that energy and drive those blade systems. Whereas Boeing obviously preferred the simplicity if you like, and the mechanically slightly simpler or at least more robust design of a gearless architecture that the G36 offered. So you Guys obviously had to have believed enormously in the potential of that because really the whole concept seemed to hinge on this propulsion system. Can you remember any discussions that you might've had have had about the reliability of it with GE, even though you did that flight test on the 727? Were there moments then when you thought, hang on a minute, maybe we need to work a little bit more on this?

Peter Morton:

Well, when I was preparing for this conversation, I understood my role in the program. I was first the director of cost management because one of the processes we decided to try was to give the engineers at least parametric, if not better, cost data so that they could, as we used to say, design to cost. And then I became the director of program and cost management because once the program was mature enough that we thought we should start hiring people, and when we went from 200 to a thousand ... Boeing always has what we call the program management office. And so I was the director of program management and cost management, and I had two staffs. One working on the cost side. How do you compute cost targets, so forth? So to answer to your question, I think that kind of information would best come by a conversation with somebody like Murray Booth.

Christine Boynton:

Peter, you touched on ... Well, you mentioned part of your job was costs, and this had so many advanced technologies for the time and even for today. What were the costs on this program like compared to other programs at Boeing?

Peter Morton:

Wow. We were convinced that we could build an airplane for less, and the build part was going to be enabled by these process technologies. An airplane without any mock-ups takes out a great big cost factor at the front end. So digital pre-assembly, meaning that you can find interferences between a Guy's structure and Steve's pipes and wires. You can find them electronically. You can put a simulation of a human being into your image and watch that person, him or her reach in to do maintenance work. You can do all kinds of things that affect life cycle costs because the airline maintenance costs are then involved as well as the build costs. So we were thoroughly convinced that we would be able to build an airplane that was cost-effective.

Some of the physical technologies as opposed to process technologies affect cost in a very deep way. An aluminum airplane versus a composite airplane. The number of wires that you have to string in an airplane when you get a high-speed data bus instead of or older practice. I was the 757's flight deck chief engineer before this. And when we invented EICAS, of which I'm one of the, so-called inventors, the cannon plug that plugged into the back of EICAS, if I remember correctly, it had 400 pins or something. And we used to draw cartoons of a guy holding up a connector with 400 pins and trying to plug it into a box, which the size of the box, can barely accommodate 400 pins. So now when you go to digital wiring, that's a totally different paradigm. So yeah, between the process ... I can't answer your question in terms of dollars and cents. That would take a better memory than I've got.

Steve Timble:

So another part of that I think would be the business model that Boeing came up with to launch this program, particularly the J and the 7J7. And I wondered if you could talk more about that. Because just from the vantage point of hindsight, it seems to foretell the kind of model that they would embrace 15, 16 years later on 787. This distributed risk approach and getting suppliers to buy into the development costs of the program.

Peter Morton:

Well, that was probably policy questions that were beyond my pay grade. Jim might have insights into that. My perception is that the business model was more like the 777. Boeing would be responsible for product definition even if it was built elsewhere. And yes, we wanted risk sharing, which we had achieved with JADC in the past on 67. But it was certainly not the business model that took place after I left, of which I know very little. But the 787 was I think a totally different scope.

Steve Timble:

Right. In this case, Boeing retained design authority, and that was the big difference between what happened with 787.

Peter Morton:

And since you write wonderful stories about all that, you probably know more about that discontinuity and time than I do. The Boeing retained the product definition responsibility, which means that applies to not just what we design and build, but also to what we procure with a detailed specification.

Steve Timble:

Well, and just also looking from the benefit of hindsight, knowing how it ended in 1987 sort of, they kept it going provisionally for several years afterwards. Or notionally I should say. But was there anything that they could have done or decisions they could have made differently, big ones, one or two that could have preserved at least some of that concept to give Boeing a clean sheet response in the 1980s to the A320?

Peter Morton:

Well, you're talking here about what are the fundamental advantages of certifying a derivative aircraft over a clean sheet airplane. If you're making a derivative airplane, and that applies to Airbus McDonnell Douglas Boeing, you are grandfathering certain aspects of the design. And so that means there's certain aspects of the non-recurring costs that you don't face. The clean sheet design as we did on the triple seven, I guess I don't know this for a fact, but on the 67, there had been all kinds of explorations on it that would make a 777. There was a stretched airplane. There was an airplane that one of our customers named The Hunchback of Mukilteo. And then the leadership of the company said ... Well, I think John Roundhill probably said, "We've got some folks in the back room working on a totally new design." And between cross section and the mission of the airplane and the opportunities that ... Not just the J7, but some of the other R&D that had been going on and presented to the company, they could pencil out a brand new airplane. The triple seven. And I can talk to you for hours about the triple seven, even though I wasn't on the program for lots of reasons.

I was director of training at the time for Boeing. But that was just a clean sheet design. It was launched in a partnership with United Airlines reminiscent of the old, old days with the 707 and the 471 chief shaking hands with Bill Allen only it was United shaking hands with Boeing.

Steve Timble:

Well, I guess another way I think about that is could Boeing have come up with a competitive clean sheet design by doing something a less radical? Going with 155 or 156 inch fuselage diameter and a super fan or something like that under the wing rather than the unducted fan in the back. You wouldn't get the 45% seat-mile advantage over the A320, like 7J7 proposed.

Peter Morton:

7J7 was about 10% better in seat-mile, 40% better in fuel burned.

Steve Timble:

Ah, yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Right. But I guess was there any way to do something like that and close the business case so Boeing would've had that clean sheet in the 1980s?

Peter Morton:

Well, I have a couple of documents where that was very specifically addressed. We say we cannot make a 10% improvement in DOC on a clean sheet design and we don't need to. Because the 37 platform ... People forget that when the 737 was configured, it was configured as a competition between tail-mounted engines and wing-mounted engines. And Jack Steiner had one of them, and Joe Sutter had the other. And after red, green team competition inside the company, we put the engines under the wing and it was really under not forward of the wing on the 100 and 200. The 737. But that gives you a platform in which you have a balanced airplane that you can stretch front and back. You can't do that indefinitely with a tail-mounted engine airplane. Douglas did about as much as you can all the way through the MD90. But we found out what the limits of comfort were when we tried the 727-300. Which if you'll remember evolved gradually into something called the 757, which was supposedly a derivative of the 27, but I'm not quite sure how many common parts there were left when we were done. In fact, I am sure how many common parts there were left when we were done.

Steve Timble:

So you had that clean sheet or you had the derivative that could compete with A320 with the 737 in your pocket. So this was a chance to do something big. A moonshot. Like a 747 in the single ... aisle, although this could have been a twin aisle.

Peter Morton:

Yeah. That's correct. But the enabler, as has been the case in the whole history of aviation, the enabler is always propulsion. I hear you saying that Guy, that's his sweet spot, propulsion. So he's picked a part of aviation that leads the way and has always led the way. Otherwise, we'd be flying with turbo compound engines.

Guy Norris:

Well, I couldn't agree more with you on that one, Peter, obviously. But it is fascinating, isn't it, when you do look at the fact that we are coming full circle now, as you mentioned earlier. And here we are ... What is it, almost 40 years or 30 years later looking at bringing this back. Boeing is working with NASA on the X66 Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, and the prime propulsion candidate for that is the CFM RISE, which is an open fan design. So I wonder what you must think about that. It's incredible it to think that finally perhaps the time is ripe and that the technology has finally caught up with the ambition.

Peter Morton:

And I don't know that it's a given that the next airplane will be a very high aspect ratio truss-braced wing on top instead of underneath. We'll see. But I would be very surprised if some part of that RISE technology isn't on the next airplane, wherever the engines happen to be located.

Guy Norris:

Right. And as you mentioned earlier, one of the problems that bedeviled the initial 7J7 design was the concern about a blade release and the damage that it might do to systems in the tail. I know I've talked to some other Boeing veterans about their concerns at the time. But now it seems with the RISE, you're only going to have a single rotating stage. It is going to be geared, and as you mentioned, it's going to have status. So potentially you're already reducing the risk factor in that design. And what I'm curious to think or to hear your thoughts about is all of the legacy implications. We've already talked about how it proved this idea of design build teams and really established a blueprint for working together, which was the mantra of the triple seven seven program. So successfully done. And Steve has mentioned you've got the actuators, the fly-by-wires, the advanced composite.

Peter Morton:

The actuators didn't make the cut.

Guy Norris:

Oh, they didn't. Okay. Interesting.

Peter Morton:

We do not have those kinds of actuators on a triple seven or on later airplanes. We have gone to a 5,000 PSI hydraulic system, which reduces the weight contribution of that system. But the electro hydrostatic actuators, completely self-contained actuator with its own little mini hydraulic system or magical electrical. I remember when we were fooling around with that, the flight controls guys brought into one of Jim Johnson's staff meetings, one of these rare earth magnets. And I don't know if you've ever seen those things, but you don't want to get your hands between the two when they decide to click together. So we were really astounded by it. There's nothing quite like a mini demo. But for some reason when you actually run all of the numbers, the electro hydrostatic actuator did not make it on the next generation of airplanes. It's an example of one of the technologies that we, shall I say, conceived or tested the idea on the J7, which did not make it onto the 77.

Guy Norris:

But even industrially going beyond that. Again, referencing Steve's J reference. Afterwards, Japan became a huge contributor on triple seven program. In fact overall ... And the 78 of course produces the wings. So it was a major turning point really in a way, wasn't it? And even though Japan was disappointed initially that it didn't get to build part of that airplane.

Peter Morton:

Well, and the technologies that they have are very significant, although try as they might, they were unable to bring a complete jet transport to the altar. And goodness knows, they worked on that pretty hard. Of course the J stood for Japan, and that was part of what we were interested in. In the emotional side of the naming convention, whatever that's worth. For us Jim was our leader and we thought that J stood for Jim and he strongly tried to kill that unsuccessfully.

Guy Norris:

Well, that's true actually, even when you think about the 7J did represent a changing of the guard at Boeing, didn't it? Because as you mentioned Jim Johnson was a new part of this new generation of leaders. He reported to a rising vice president called Phil Condit at the time. And then of course Alan Mulally was right there in the early days. So it was an inflection point in many ways, wasn't it?

Peter Morton:

It was. It was an inflection point also because there's something about the culture of the program. We were hell-bent for doing it. This culture evolution ... I think I sent you my paper on culture. It's something I've observed. I think when I come back, I'm going to come back as an anthropologist because it's fascinating to watch how people in groups do things and work together. Boeing's naming convention has always been a somewhat happenstance. People forget that the 57 was the 7N7 before. And why was that? That's because of Bob Norton. And then the J7, that's probably why we called it Jim. But the history of the culture of the programs migrated or morphed from stand up and take names type pretty directive, paternalistic. And I say paternalistic because it was all men. Model to on the 57, Phil did some really interesting experimentation with how the culture would go. And perhaps one way of looking at that is he invited Peter Rinearson who was the beat reporter for The Seattle Times into the program. And Peter was given license to walk around to talk to anybody, interview anybody, and he wrote seven articles on the 57 that won him a Pulitzer Prize.

So then when we got to the J7, Jim was doing similar things, although we never had a program that launched with 10,000 people. And when we got to the triple seven, it got to be truly a culture by design, and this was mostly Alan. The people working together to produce the preferred new airplane family. And that streak of words was hammered out on a weekend retreat with Phil and Alan and several of the other leaders and an organization development person. A psychologist Don Krebs who kept people on track. And they decided to have a boot camp. Nobody was going to come aboard that program without going through the triple seven boot camp. It was called orientation.

And there people came from 10,000 people come from all over the place and each one brings their own cultural experience. You can put a placard on the wall and you can put a model on the wall. And even with the boot camp, they'd be a little suspicious that nobody's going to shoot the messenger on this program until you get into one of those business process reviews with Alan and you come up with something that's a real red flag and nobody shoots the messenger. In fact, they thank the messenger and then the word gets around that this place is different. So that's why I call it Boeing's Camelot because I am convinced that if Boeing had continued to do business that way, we would've a different company today.

Guy Norris:

That's interesting, Peter. You mentioned the legacy aspect of it earlier on with the comment that Murray Booth had said. Part of our target here with looking at history through the prism of Aviation Week's archives is to be able to allow people to delve back into them to see for themselves what we've done in the past and how you can use that to perhaps inform the future. But I was looking last night and November 1988, and when the program was really on ice by then, as Steve had mentioned. And he was quoted in Aviation Week. And he said we were astounded at what shared knowledge can do. We are definitely going to continue this process. It is unreasonable and philosophically unsound to expect an engineer to design a part to do its job and also be the cheapest and easiest to produce. So the company hopes to develop manufacturing methods that preserve the integrity of the structure, but lead to a aircraft that are cheaper to build, inspect and maintain. So it is like 7J7 really just paved this new road towards a promising new future.

Peter Morton:

Yeah. And that was vintage Murray what you read to me. Yeah. He's a consummate engineer, a consummate configurator and such a gentleman at the same time. Murray was never one to call people to task in public or do some of the antics that you see in certain leadership circles.

Guy Norris:

Looking at the 7Js, the way that you finally ended up with that concept and the cross section, do you think there's things that will survive perhaps potentially to when Boeing does finally launch a replacement for the 737? I'm thinking particularly the cross section. The ability to get away from the hated middle seat and have two aisles in a so-called narrow body. That's a pretty remarkable thing. I know there's got to be airlines out there, which would beg you to do that.

Peter Morton:

We would be giving the airline the tool to gain market share. Now, these days, as a licensed practicing passenger, the market share is an illusion. It's a hundred percent for everybody. Every airplane I've gotten on recently is full and would've been full, whether it had two aisles, one aisle or three. But I think there will come a time where the market forces have rebalanced. And who knows? Certainly I hope that Boeing's archives and memories contain those things. The things you're talking about.

Guy Norris:

Peter, do you mind if I take you back to one of the aspect on the 7J, just because it's so great that we've got you here. I can't tell you. To have somebody who was actually there through this. But one of the things that intrigues me about it is the fact that the 737 as you mentioned, was an amazing design at that time, and yet here it was being challenged from within by Boeing at the time with this potential replacement for both the 72 and the 73 essentially. And in 1981, the 737 was Boeing's weakest seller. The plan was to try and sell 500 more and then close down the line because that would cover most of the costs. And yet this idea of the CFM56 came along and the re-engineing happened, and of course sales took off. So by the end of 1987 when the 7J was in the balance, Boeing had sold more than 1007 37s, which at that time was a huge number.

So in 1987, the same time the V2500, the rival engine to the CFM56, which really Airbus had connected to for the A320, was having all sorts of technical troubles. So GE was beginning to read the signs at the time itself, and they'd seen how the 737 was taking off with the CFM56. You had the option of launching a stretch version, the 400 to extend the family with a CFM56. And so GE's, Brian Rowe obviously at that time had said, "Wait a minute. We're killing ourselves to develop this G36 when we've already got this little engine, the CFM56. The little engine that could." So I guess my question is the 7J also weirdly altered the destiny of the 737 family in a huge way and led to another 30 years of production, didn't it?

Peter Morton:

Yeah. And what 10,000 airplanes?

Guy Norris:

Yeah .absolutely.

Peter Morton:

That's absolutely true. And within Boeing, it was a pretty lively period as to what people wanted to do. Some of the things I've dusted off here by just reading my files fascinate me, because I'd forgotten what you had just said there. We had one salesman in Germany who wouldn't even show the J7 to their customer. And you know who that is. And we had Delta Air Lines as a possible launch customer for the J7, but also somebody interested in 37 derivatives. Joe Sutter at the time was really concerned about approach speeds. And so when the 737-400 was proposed internally, the 300 had not yet flown. And Joe was reluctant to approve a 400 until he saw what the 300's approach speeds would actually be in real life.

There was this new system called Computational Fluid Design, which one of our wonderful aerodynamicists Walt Gillette was working on. And he had predicted approach speeds on the 300 that Joe just didn't believe you could mess around with a wing that much and not encounter a really high approach speed. And so we delayed launching the 400, much to the frustration of that very same salesman whose name we didn't mention because he thought if we stretched the 37-300 and offered it right away, it would inhibit the success of the A320. So quite a few months went by and Airbus launched the A320 I think to this day, Rudy would probably tell you if he'd had his way and people have listened to him that might not have never have been launched. Now that's probably hyperbole, but a lot of factors in this.

Guy Norris:

Christine, did you have a question? I'm sorry.

Christine Boynton:

Yeah. This is actually going back to one of your earlier remarks, Peter, so it's a little bit out of order. You'd mentioned also that you had a memo that announced the dissolution of the program and that you could read some excerpts of that, and I was really curious to hear some of those excerpts.

Peter Morton:

It was to all 7J7 employees. 23 October 1987. And of course it starts with, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate each one of you for all that you've done while working on the 7J7 program. And thank you for taking some risks and for having the courage to propose innovative ways of doing business. Congratulations on your considerable accomplishments. Through your dedication and willingness to be part of this vision, you have advanced the company far beyond where it was. We have learned to relate to each other in new ways. Through co-location of engineering and operations personnel, through multidisciplinary problem solving teams, we solved problems that never would've been resolved. You've set new standards for communication. You've advanced the technology of computerized design by going beyond what even the manufacturer of the CATIA system envisioned. You've learned to ask tough questions and then seek the answers causing all of us to continually confront our own methodologies and biases. You've made many improvements in the quality of how we design our products and refined technology that others are still dreaming about.

Your achievements will not be lost. We have no intention of giving up the progress you made, nor of conceding our technological advantages in the market. The core group remaining will continue to work on the technology and its application, putting us in an even better market position when the time is right. And then he talks about how they'll help reassignment. And then he closes. We are a success. We've set a new standard for excellence in performance and teamwork in the Boeing commercial airplane company. We have faced frustrations and obstacles with enthusiasm and aggression and come out of the experience much stronger. I plan on taking what I've learned to my new assignment, and I expect all of you to do the same. We're all part of the Boeing team. Each of us has the opportunity to instill in our new areas, our positive attitudes, problem solving skills, technological expertise, and knowledge gained. We can be a force that positively affects the entire company, strengthening it and maintaining our leadership in the world. Again, thank you. You're the finest, most dedicated team of people I've ever associated with. That was a motivational letter to receive.

Christine Boynton:

Wow. I know you worked on a lot of different programs during your time at Boeing, but what did you take from the 7J7 program?

Peter Morton:

Well, my assignment following the 7J7 program was as director of customer training. And I modeled much of the organizational ideas after what I learned on the J7, and I'd learned from Phil on the 57 before that. So I'm sure I emerged from this experience changed. I guess philosophically in a lot of organizations, there's a message either explicitly said or implicit that goes out to all the people on the factory floor and it says, your job is dependent on how I perform by the leader. And it's really opposite. My job as the leader is dependent on how the folks on the factory floor perform. So one of Jim's habits was to go out on the factory floor over and over, and when I was in the training organization in collaboration with my executive assistant, we made sure that Morton didn't stay locked up in his office dreaming his dreams and plotting his schemes.

The idea was Peter, she would literally stick her nose in and say, "It's time you got out of the office. Go see what's going on in wonderland down there where the folks really do the work." And so that was one of the things that certainly changed me. I can't tell you how it changed others. I guess I can tell you that Alan went on to become a legendary leader first at Boeing and the program, the triple seven, then at Boeing and his job as the ... I worked for him again when he was the president of Boeing commercial, and then he went on to work for the Blue Oval, and I guess somebody in Fortune Magazine said he was one of the three greatest leaders in the world comparing him to the Prime Minister of Germany and the Pope, I think were the three on the cover of the magazine.

Guy Norris:

Well, you mentioned Alan there. Alan Mulally, of course. It just shows you really how much the 7J did completely change Boeing in a very strange way for an aircraft that was never built. He quotes Boeing Chairman Thornton T. Wilson, of course, as saying the 7J7 was the best investment in aircraft development that Boeing ever made, weirdly, and adds that we couldn't have done the seven triple seven without the 7J7. So for an airplane that was never made, it had a mighty big influence on the history and destiny of the company.

Peter Morton:

I should thank you for the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane, and it really will, I think, galvanize me to do something.

Steve Timble:

Well, believe me, we thank you for sharing it. That was amazing. It changed my perspective on a lot of things.

Guy Norris:

It did. Yeah. Fantastic.

Christine Boynton:

That is a wrap for this episode of Check 6 Revisits. A special thanks to Peter for joining us today and sharing his remarkable insights. Special thanks also to our podcast producer in London, Guy Ferneyhough, and to Steve Trimble and Guy Norris. We'll also pull from the Aviation Week and Space Technology Archives and post some links to past coverage in the show notes online. If you'd like to delve into that archive for yourself, Aviation Week subscribers can head to archive.aviationweek.com. And if you enjoyed the episode and want to help support the work we do, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave us a star rating or write a review. Thank you for listening and have a great week.