The Coming Boeing Bailout?

I was on a Ryanair flight earlier this year and the integrated stairs were used.

I believe the fleet is mostly 737-800s, and having the option to avoid staircars and skybdridges saves money.

> because the United States, so far, is still the most powerful country. ... But for how long?

What would be the competition to the US other than China (which is insular, nationalist to the extreme and protectionist to the extreme)?

If China is the only superpower competitor, then the structure you just described will continue to work perpetually as there is no alternative.

There is a common fantasy that the US is suddenly going to collapse, because 'all empires end.' It's nothing more than a fantasy because US wealth and power is derived from its domestic economic output, not from conquering foreigners or invading countries like Afghanistan (despite what the collapse-fantasy types would like to believe; the US already had the largest economy by 1890, long before the dollar became the global reserve standard). The US economy is built on its enormous scientific and R&D output, which is unrivaled in world history. That positioning of strength spans aerospace, spacetech, medtech, biotech, pharma, agriculture, software, mobile, semiconductors, intellectual property broadly, media & cultural export, finance & banking (Visa is worth $400b, Deutsche Bank is worth $16b; US banks are eating Europe right now, because of how weak their financial position is in contrast). The US is the world's #2 manufacturer by a large margin and is likely to regain ground on China from here forward (they will lose manufacturing share globally). The US has a position in energy that is unrivaled overall, including its oil and natural gas potential. The US has by far the strongest and most profitable airlines, which are now looking outward and beginning to buy into the rest of the world's weaker airlines.

The US still has 19 of the world's top 20 universities, and 40x of the top 50. That's one of its critical foundations supporting its economy in the post WW2 era. The rest of the world has nothing even remotely like it.

The US position is still expanding, not contracting. It has added an economy the size of Germany + France since the great recession. Simultaneously, China is gobbling up position / influence / economy / power in the other half of the world the US doesn't control.

There is no peer to the US in the 'West' and there is not going to be. Most of Europe has seen zero economic growth since 2006-2007, their stagnation is going to get worse rather than better. They will fall further behind (and their politics will get much worse as that happens). Japan (third largest economy) is going to see little to no economic growth for the next 20 years at least. So where's the competitor going to come from? It's not. The US will continue to grow more powerful, wealthier, and its economy will continue to out-grow Europe and its military capabilities will continue to expand far beyond what Europe is capable of.

China will be the sole competitor to the US in the 21st century and the two will split the world in half.

The 737 MAX is aerodynamically stable. MCAS isn't even active while any flap is extended. MCAS should be active only at angle of attacks, which wouldn't be reached at extreme angle of attacks. The sole purpose of MCAS is to emulate the exact reactions of the older 737 machines in this domain, as this was required for maintaining the same type rating. That is also the reason, the pilots are supposed to deactivate MCAS via the runaway stabilizer checklist. This software isn't required for stable operations of the airplane - Lion air had a MCAS malfunction the day before the crash, but disengaging the electric stabilizers solved the problem and they were able to finish their flight without incidents.

It's also worth noting that there were two 717s, the first was indeed part of the 720 & 707 family. (it was the 'commercial' designation of the C-135 when sold to france for use as a tanker)

You know the answer to that question. Comac, UAC, Airbus, Embraer and others all came from government efforts. Bombardier took Canadair off the government's hands to get started, so they might be the nearest there is to 'private free market enterprise'. Boeing live off the the defence contracts but they are arguably totally free market. We know this isn't true and pretend.

The article talks about how the McDonnell Douglas and Boeing merger was evil. But there is no discussion on why Airbus is okay when Airbus is a merger of various European defence interests with different cultural values.

Why is one merger bad and the other not put under the same scrutiny?

Also, why isn't there a supply chain where anyone can enter the market? Pratt and Whitney, Rolls Royce and General Electric make engines, so if you can make your own plane you just bolt on ready made engines. But that is as far as the system integration aspect seems to go.

Most auto manufacturers do make their own engines so they are not 'systems integrators'. However, if you want to make cars you could go to Bosch for the bits they make, Johnson Controls for the bits they make, Pirelli for a few tyres and before you knew it there would be everything needed for final assembly. You could even get a contract manufacturer to make the whole thing.

With computers anyone can build a PC. But there might only be 2-3 supplier choices for a given component. Some PCs are built for a specialist niche, e.g. point of sales systems, or medical. No heavy handed governments made the PC manufacturers merge into giant mega corporations, they did that themselves opening doors for new entrants in the process.

Planes could be more about systems integration, so a given airliner might be able to get a local place to build planes for its requirements from off the shelf parts. The governments could have rationalised the industry to work this way. Imagine if, as per the engine example there are 2-3 suppliers for wings, fuselages, avionics packages, cabin interiors, fuel interiors and so on.

This idea can be easily nitpicked, however, aeons ago the U.S. government legislated so that airliners could not build their own planes.