Boeing Boeing - part the sixth

The recent news that Indonesia is circulating it's results, to the pain of FAA and Boeing, led me to, once again, let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles. Much to my surprise and glee, it turns out the Worst Case Scenario isn't my idea alone. No, the head of Boeing aircraft said just that during the walk up to the MAX:

"Every customer I talk to has a real hard time understanding why a re-engined airplane makes sense," Albaugh said. "Airbus says it will cost them a billion Euros to re-engine [the A320, 737 equivalent]. My guess is it's going to cost them considerably more than that. The engines are bigger. They are going to have to redesign the wings, the gear. It's going to be a design change that will ripple through that airframe."
[my emphasis]

Case closed, I suppose. If you read the piece, you find that Boeing CEO over-rode Albaugh. Not to mention that the MAX is lower, by a bit, than the A320. Ya think? A commercial passenger aircraft isn't a X-29.

Stability was provided by the computerized flight control system making 40 corrections per second. The flight control system was made up of three redundant digital computers backed up by three redundant analog computers; any of the three could fly it on its own, but the redundancy allowed them to check for errors.

OTOH, the A320 (and Airbus planes since) is fly-by-wire, which boils down to computer controlled.