Boeing model designations after 797?

Triton

Triton

Donald McKelvy
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I understand that the Board of Directors of the Boeing Company reserved the 700s for model designations for commercial airliners. The story also goes that the last 7 in the Boeing 707 model designation was added for luck. What do you believe will be the model designation after the Boeing 797? Will Boeing re-use its model designations? Thoughts?
 
Triton said:
I understand that the Board of Directors of the Boeing Company reserved the 700s for model designations for commercial airliners. The story also goes that the last 7 in the Boeing 707 model designation was added for luck. What do you believe will be the model designation after the Boeing 797? Will Boeing re-use its model designations? Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Model 701 was for the XB-59 that lost to the XB-58. -SP
 
Most of the 700-series was allocated to airliner projects, but not all of it (see Boeing model designations: the 700-series in the "Designation Systems" section of this forum).

The final "7" may have been considered as a lucky streak kind of thing... In the past, the Model 300 had been redesignated as the 307, possibly for the same reason.
At any rate, it became a kind commercial gimmick to memorize the aircraft's name easily, and Boeing even protected all 7*7 designations to prevent any use by other companies.

When the Model 367-80 prototype was considered for production, two variants were planned: the 707 with the "8" shaped fuselage and the 717 with the round fuselage.

The latter was drafted in both airliner and transport version, but in the end, only the transport 717 was built, becoming the C-135 and KC-135 series.

As for future designations beyond "797", I suggest that they will go the Peugeot route: when the 107, 207, 307, 507, 607, 807 and 907 were all allocated (Peugeot's trademark designations are built around a central "0", they created the 1007 (with the double "0") and this became true of several new models (3008, 5008). Probably Boeing will keep the "7" but add two figures in the middle ("7007, 7017, 7027..." or "7007, 7117, 7227...").
 
Stargazer2006 said:
As for future designations beyond "797", I suggest that they will go the Peugeot route: when the 107, 207, 307, 507, 607, 807 and 907 were all allocated (Peugeot's trademark designations are built around a central "0", they created the 1007 (with the double "0") and this became true of several new models (3008, 5008). Probably Boeing will keep the "7" but add two figures in the middle ("7007, 7017, 7027..." or "7007, 7117, 7227...").
Click to expand...

I like your suggested schemes a lot, Stéphane. I wanted to add fictional Boeing aircraft to my future alternate history, but I didn't want to use an 800 or 900 series of model designations given the historical importance and marketing cache of the number 7.
 
How about go directly to "2107"? The "21" would be for the 21st century, and would be pronounced "twenty-one oh seven"
 
Taking into account the reasoning of Stéphane, I was thinking more about how the Boeing model designations are pronounced. The Boeing 787 is pronounced "Seven-Eight-Seven". The next Boeing commercial aircraft may be the 797 pronounced "Seven-Nine-Seven". The next number in sequence after 9 is 10, so the next Boeing commercial aircraft could be the 7107 and pronounced "Seven-Ten-Seven". After 10 comes 11, so we have the 7117 pronounced "Seven-Eleven-Seven."

So future Boeing commercial aircraft designations could be 797, 7107, 7117, 7127, 7147, 7157, 7167, etc. I excluded 7137 because of the superstition surrounding the number 13.
 
The 787 was the 7E7 for a while, they could just switch out the middle number for a letter. 7A7, 7B7, etc...
 
Boeing has had the 720 version of the 707 and the DC9 became the 717. So that leaves
710, 711, 712etc or 721, 722etc.
The 8 numbers I think were military and 818 was the TFX.
Or as suggested 7A7, 7B7 etc.
None of them really work as well as 707 and co. They could go over to names with -liner suffix. An Ad agency is probably working on a new name. One cert it wont have the word MAX anywhere near it.
 
The Boeing model number 820 was used as a catch-all number for a wide-variety of giant transports and tilt-wing aircraft with substantial vestiges of the B-52 fuselage, but also a supersonic transport. The B-52 derived Model 820 design studies are discussed elsewhere, while the Model 820-104 and 820-111 were tilt-wing transports, and the Model 820-107 was a Mach 3 supersonic transport.
 

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