United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by philjohn » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

snickerbockers wrote: post #228

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Boeing can't even keep its newest plane in the skies The 787 is the newest airframe and it's fine. The 737 is the Windows XP of the sky and there's only so much you can fix with service packs.

787 doesn't fill the same role as 737 and A320, it's a much larger plane that carries more passengers. 737 and A320 seem to be much more popular for domestic flights within the US than larger planes.

And the economics of a small single-aisle plane for medium haul, e.g. the East Coast, seems to be what is pushing the needle.

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

#272

Post by eqvinox » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

larksimian wrote: post #131

trimbo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Airbus be different?

My suspicion: the whole world lets the FAA validate airplanes and then sort of rubber stamps. Boeing was able to capture the FAA, but Airbus wasn't(since it's a foreign company). As such Airbus is still working with a proper adversarial regulator, whereas Boeing can get away with more cut corners. Eventually that screwed them. The EUs move for greater local safety review, ironically, might make Airbus less safe, sinc…

> Would German environmental NGOs have blown the whistle on something like this? Maybe?

I think yes, it's just that they expected the regulatory system to work. Companies intentionally defeating emissions tests, unthinkable! ... just as unthinkable as the FAA rubberstamping whatever Boeing puts in front of them :(

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

#273

Post by atoav » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

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?

As somebody who lives close to the Hamburg Airbus Factory and read a lot about the Boeing story: the regulators are more strict within the EU, and my feeling is the biggest mistake in the whole Boeing saga was to have them regulate themselves.

While there might be a economic benefit to not having to go the extra mile to get a regulators aproval, this can bite you really badly if you cannot uphold quality yourself any longer. And the interviews I heard wirh Boeing personel is nothing I ever heard even in personal exchanges with Airbus people. They surely also have their issues, bur to me it feels like a few magnitudes difference in severity.

So in short: underfunding the FAA isn’t doing you airplane manufacturers a favour in the long term. I know in the US people are usually anxious to give any job to the state, but regulating is actually one of the things they should do, and should do well

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

#274

Post by SenHeng » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

pdx_flyer wrote: post #201

Aloha wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has very little to do with that. McDonnel Douglass had no equivalent to the 757 really either. (The MD-11 was a suitable replacement for the 767, if you wanted a 3-hole aircraft) I'm absolutely certain that if Boeing was making a 757NG like aircraft, United would have bought those. When it comes down to it, Boeing has no direct replacement for the 757. Airbus does, so United bought airbus.

If Boeing had wanted to play ball on an NMA aircraft, United definitely would have purchased them. Instead they abandoned their smaller 787 variant and didn't pursue NMA at all, leaving the door wide open for Airbus.

NMA? Not-Made-in-America? Something-Medium-Aircraft?

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

#275

Post by detaro » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

SenHeng wrote: post #274

pdx_flyer wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Boeing had wanted to play ball on an NMA aircraft, United definitely would have purchased them. Instead they abandoned their smaller 787 variant and didn't pursue NMA at all, leaving the door wide open for Airbus.

NMA? Not-Made-in-America? Something-Medium-Aircraft?

I assume "New-Midsize-Aircraft", which is the name under which Boing discusses concepts for a new series of planes.

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

#276

Post by renaudg » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #231

socialdemocrat wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

> Europe has not legalized corruption to the same degree as the US Surely you jest. EU law is written by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats to an even larger degree than US law is.

EU law is proposed by the Commission, made up of appointed representatives of each member state's elected government. It's voted and amended by the directly elected members of the EU parliament.

This is HN not the Daily Mail comments section, let's keep this space free of baseless europhobic disinformation.

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

#277

Post by Xixi » Wed, Dec 04, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #257

Xixi wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

787 orders and deliveries are very nice, but the bread and butter of Boeing and Airbus remains the 737 and A320 families. As you say Boeing has 500 orders for 787 yet to deliver, but they most importantly have 4,500 of the 737 remaining to deliver. Same for Airbus, they have about 600 orders for the A350 yet to deliver, but they most importantly have over 6,000 A320 in the pipeline. The biggest issue for Boeing is th…

Thanks, interesting. Do you think this dynamic has already been priced into Boeing's stock now, which is why it did not move much on this 50 plane order?

Yes, I think it is, none of what I wrote should come as a surprise to anyone even casually reading news about Boeing/Airbus. Certainly not an analyst crunching numbers.

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

#278

Post by jimbobimbo » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

elygre wrote: post #219

jimbobimbo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"EU paid Airbus billions in illegal subsidies, WTO rules": https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44120525

“ WTO says U.S. failed to halt state tax subsidy for Boeing”: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-usa-aircraft-wto/wto-s...

I did not argue the opposite.

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

#279

Post by pdonis » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 12:59 AM UTC

slavak wrote: post #255

pdonis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for Airbus there is this where it looks like problems were swept under the rug Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 This is the same basic design flaw that Boeing's MCAS has (allowing a single AoA sensor failure to cause the airplane to do unexpected and dangerous things), but unlike MCAS, it wasn't an ad hoc addition to deal with an issue in a redesign of an old airplane, it was designed into al…

You keep posting this, but it's simply not true- Qantas flight 72 did not experience an AoA sensor failure, and even if it had, the A330 uses all 3 independent AoA sensors and all 3 independent air data inertial reference units to command control movements. The issue was caused by one of the ADIRU CPUs corrupting valid sensor data to produce a series of very specific spikes, hitting a specific edge case in the AoA cr…

> a specific edge case in the AoA cross-check logic

What the article you linked to describes doesn't look quite like that to me. It looks like a design that does not use the "median of three values" method that the article says is used for "most" sensors (but not AoA). I agree, however, with your correction that it was not a direct AoA sensor failure such as occurred in the 737 Max incidents.

> It's undoubtedly a serious design flaw, but it's not even remotely in the same ballpark as the Max's flagrant disregard for all process and well known design standards.

It's not the same as MCAS in the sense that it's not an ad hoc addition to deal with an issue that arose in a redesign of an old airplane, true.

However, it is a case of (a) a flaw in an automated system causing the plane to automatically take an action that is unexpected and dangerous, instead of the automated system detecting the error; and (b) an automated system overriding the input of the human pilot in a case where the human pilot can plainly see that the automated system is doing something wrong.

Also, it illustrates a more general design philosophy with Airbus that has led to other incidents, which is to hide important information about what the automated system is doing from the pilots and limit their ability to interfere with its operation. The pilots have no direct readout of the AoA sensor values that the automated system is using, or indeed of most of its other inputs. It was also not clear to the pilots exactly what mode the automated system was in (they thought it was in Direct Law when it wasn't), and there was not a simple "stop the automation" button they could press to put the plane into a known manual mode with known behavior.

While I would agree that this is not the same specific failure mode as MCAS was with Boeing, I'm not sure it's not "remotely in the same ballpark" as far as long term implications are concerned.

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

#280

Post by Wh1skey » Thu, Dec 05, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

ailideex wrote: post #250

snarf21 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay for this all over the place and not just in planes. Look at it in communications, entertainment, social media. Stock price is valued as more important than choice for the consumer.

> Stock price is valued as more important than choice for the consumer. By who? And why should those that value it more than choice for the consumer value choice for the consumer more? And how would they even go about doing that?

> By who?

By government officials creating anti-competitive regulations and taxes.

> And why should those that value it more than choice for the consumer value choice for the consumer more?

They should value choice for the consumer more because the total net benefit to society via GDP or any other economic indicator would be greater.

> And how would they even go about doing that?

Reducing barriers to entry for startups/small businesses and removing/reducing regulations that exert downward pressure on existing small businesses(Ex. minimum wage laws) are the first solutions that come to mind.