Boeing actually pitched a "787, but 737 sized" to airlines, who all said "No, what we really want is a plane with a 737 Type Certificate (so all of our pilots don't need expensive training) that matches the fuel efficiency of the A320neo" and so Boeing found themselves promising a plane that would be a normal 737 so all the pilots didn't need expensive training on it, but would have the same fuel efficiency as a A320neo.
It was 100% the airlines that killed Boeing's attempt to pitch them on a clean-sheet airliner. I still believe that if Boeing had a CEO who was an engineer (and not a Harvard MBA who spent two decades at GE under Jack "Company Killer" Welch) at the time they would have not made that promise, because it was impossible to get the larger, more fuel efficient engines under a 737 wing without changing the flight characteristics too much to keep the type certificate.
But... the Sonic Cruiser is a minor footnote compared to the A380. That was an enormous business disaster (if any A380 ever turned a profit on fly-away costs alone, ignoring the initial up front costs, it was only just barely). The thing about building a new clean-sheet jetliner like this is that you are betting the company's financial performance for the next 10 years on this working out. Because Boeing was actively killing people and there are only the two companies (C919 notwithstanding) Airbus came out of the era looking great, but the A380 was orders of magnitude bigger corporate problem than the Sonic Cruiser.
Well maybe not impossible. Boeing designed extending landing gear for the 737 Max 10 (although it was mainly done to allow for stretching the fuselage). That didn't require any major breakthroughs and presumably could have been brought forward to the Max 8 in order to allow lower engine placement, although it would have delayed development.
I didn't think the 9 inches added to the gears on the telescoping mechanism were enough to fit the LEAP or the PW1000, I thought that they needed more clearance than that.
No, the guy who killed Boeing was Jim McNerney, their CEO from 2005 to 2015. McNerney was the guy who started the 737 MAX program in 2011. He got an MBA from Harvard in 1975 and worked for GE from 1982 to 2001.
You're talking about Dennis Muilenberg, who was the CEO during the 737 Max accidents and failed to properly investigate it (he was CEO from 2015-2019). But he came from the Boeing Defense side, and had no influence on the civil aviation side when it made the decisions that destroyed the 737 Max Program, which were made in 2010 when James McNerney was CEO. James McNerney is the guy with the Harvard MBA who spent two decades working for Jack "Company Killer" Welch at GE (he ran the airplane engine division), lost the succession battle, went to be CEO of 3M for a few years, then was CEO of Boeing from 2005-2015, and is the one I hold responsible for the real failures of the 737 Max program.
Muilenberg was the one who got fired- and he definitely deserves the blame for the Ethiopian Airlines flight, they should definitely have investigate Lion Air faster and better- but it was McNerney who was responsible for most of the 737 Max program. The engines and wings issues were basically set in stone by the time that Muilenberg first became responsible for the program.
I'm talking about Philip Condit, who triggered the extensive outsourcing plan for 787 program including ridiculous cost targets (which were followed under Stonecipher), and triggered the critical move from Seattle to Chicago. He also led the process to integrate McDonnell-Douglas, so gets at least some of the blame for how the merger happened.
It was 100% the airlines that killed Boeing's attempt to pitch them on a clean-sheet airliner. I still believe that if Boeing had a CEO who was an engineer (and not a Harvard MBA who spent two decades at GE under Jack "Company Killer" Welch) at the time they would have not made that promise, because it was impossible to get the larger, more fuel efficient engines under a 737 wing without changing the flight characteristics too much to keep the type certificate.
But... the Sonic Cruiser is a minor footnote compared to the A380. That was an enormous business disaster (if any A380 ever turned a profit on fly-away costs alone, ignoring the initial up front costs, it was only just barely). The thing about building a new clean-sheet jetliner like this is that you are betting the company's financial performance for the next 10 years on this working out. Because Boeing was actively killing people and there are only the two companies (C919 notwithstanding) Airbus came out of the era looking great, but the A380 was orders of magnitude bigger corporate problem than the Sonic Cruiser.