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United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

reuters.com

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Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#51

Post by lotsofpulp »

riffraff wrote: post #34
wbl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vertical integration means fewer middlemen driving up the margin on each part.

but it may also mean far less chance to innovate production practice. If vertical integration is always good, the ideal situation is a single producer for any kind of product and no suppliers, which doesn't seem to work too well either.

Efficiency and security are always traded for one another. Unfortunately, markets will tend to the short term benefits so the pendulum will swing towards efficiency until it’s gone too far and something causes it to swing back.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#52

Post by brnt »

rsynnott wrote: post #18
whatshisface wrote: post #7

America is going to pay for the cronyism that merged every airplane manufacturer into one and eliminated internal competition. If you don't have internal competition, you'll collapse in the face of external competition. There is no way to get away from Boeing without getting away from the American aerospace industry entirely, a problem that didn't exist back when McDonnell Douglas was around.

I mean, one option is to break up Boeing (and Airbus). They’re far too vertically integrated.

Is Airbus vertically integrated? It's quite spread out over Europe in production and some parts enjoy quite a bit of autonomy on design too.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#53

Post by magduf »

nawgszy wrote: post #45
rootusrootus wrote: post #5

My takeaway is that Airbus and Boeing both need to make progress on their clean-sheet midsize designs. The A321XLR sounds great but it's kinda what Boeing has been doing to the 737, milking it for decades. The A320 is a newer design, for sure, but it's not young. I won't miss the 737. What I'd love to see is a twin-aisle-but-small short range aircraft. Yeah, that won't happen, but it would be comfy.

I know people that don't think a new airframe will be designed in our lifetimes, and it's hard to disagree. Why is it taking so long?

Because it costs money and Boeing would rather have larger executive bonuses than pay for a new design. The fact that a new design would be better for the future health of the company is irrelevant: the executives won't be there in 20-40 years, so why should they care about that? All that's important is their compensation in the next few years until they land a gig somewhere else.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#54

Post by rsynnott »

ahartmetz wrote: post #37
whatshisface wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, and it could easily have gone the other way. By not having any competition or diversification, countries expose themselves to tremendous risk: the balance of the aerospace industry rested on a coin flip and the US bet tails. Without the cronyism, we could have had many separate raffle tickets against Europe's one.

It seems like Airbus currently is different. Maybe the friction from it being very multinational prevented it from becoming like Boeing, maybe it will have its own big scandal in a month. Who knows. But currently, Airbus does look better.

I mean, it wasn’t a safety scandal, but the A380 was a huge disaster for the company. I’d be more comfortable getting on a notional A360 than a notional 797, but both companies have self-harmed recently.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#55

Post by ausjke »

From a different perspective that's what you got when company are obsessed to save money everywhere no matter what it takes, to the point to outsource airplane control system software to India at $9 per hour, we had airplane-battery-problem a few years back at Boeing due to the same reason, now it starts to kill people, where is the end?

People buy airplane for safety first, nobody dares to buy them no matter how cheap they are if they will end up killing people on board.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#56

Post by rjsw »

yingw787 wrote: post #38

What’s the state of mechanical engineering Software tooling / infrastructure On Linux and UNIX-like operating systems? I know Solidworks and AutoCAD are primarily Windows-based software, with proprietary data formats like .SLDPRT/.SLDASM (Solidworks Assembly) and high vendor lock-in. Why haven’t we seen greater adoption of scriptable, composable utilities (like a finite element analysis simulation) that might enable…

Aerospace was the earliest adopter of standard CAD data formats (ISO 10303 [1]) and the current development is mainly funded by Boeing and Airbus. You could build something on top of Open Cascade Technology [2] if you want an open source solution, BRL-CAD supports STEP too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10303 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cascade_Technology

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#57

Post by thrillgore »

whatshisface wrote: post #7

America is going to pay for the cronyism that merged every airplane manufacturer into one and eliminated internal competition. If you don't have internal competition, you'll collapse in the face of external competition. There is no way to get away from Boeing without getting away from the American aerospace industry entirely, a problem that didn't exist back when McDonnell Douglas was around.

You also literally just described how Airbus also came into existence.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#58

Post by rjsw »

mumblemumble wrote: post #50
dbcurtis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking about how to implement that after the MAX starts flying again. Flight search interfaces don’t seem to filter on equipment. And of course, equipment gets changed at times, so you may book one aircraft and have a different one swapped in on the ramp. I wonder if after you have checked in, and the airline swaps in a MAX, if you can get credit for your ticket if you refuse to board a MAX? I would gue…

Seems like you could either target routes that don't fly 737s at all, just much bigger or much smaller planes. Or you could stick to carriers that don't own any 737 MAX 8's such as Amtrak and SNCF.

There are airlines with an all Airbus fleet, you don't have to stick to travelling by rail.

Re: United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s

#59

Post by socialdemocrat »

trimbo wrote: post #17
whatshisface wrote: post #7

America is going to pay for the cronyism that merged every airplane manufacturer into one and eliminated internal competition. If you don't have internal competition, you'll collapse in the face of external competition. There is no way to get away from Boeing without getting away from the American aerospace industry entirely, a problem that didn't exist back when McDonnell Douglas was around.

Why would Airbus be different?

Because Europe has not legalized corruption to the same degree as the US. Massive campaign contributions is not as common in Europe, hence large European multi-nationals likely don't have the same opportunity to change regulations to serve them.

Of course they can still influence politicians by talking about all the jobs they will provide etc. Also power in Europe is not centralized the same way as it is in the US. In the US you can lobby Washington DC.

American lobbyist companies started swarming Brüssels as soon as the EU started gaining more power over national legislation.

So there is potential for the EU to head in the US direction, but it isn't quite there yet.

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