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Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

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Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#221

Post by missedthecue »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #174
jltsiren wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is very small, and it can't support that many companies making passenger aircraft. If you want aircraft of that size, you have to buy Boeing or Airbus. Both are sold out until the 2030s. And if you are already operating Boeing aircraft, it's more cost-effective to buy more of them instead of switching to Airbus. China spent ~15 years developing the C919, and it's finally entering mass production. But it als…

China spent ~15 years developing the C919, and it's finally entering mass production. But it also appears to be sold out until the 2030s. ahahahahahahahahahahah no. Since 2022 Comac has delivered a grand total of four C919s. The only non-Chinese airline to order any is owned by a rich Chinese guy. The rest are Chinese airlines that have been browbeaten into ordering some. Nobody outside of China is in any rush to ord…

True on all counts but it probably won't be long until it sells well. The Chinese government is throwing a lot of money behind it and even if the US doesn't certify it for political reasons, there is a huge global market starving for fresh air frames.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#222

Post by scythe »

klausa wrote: post #177
scythe wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Their latest model is the Irkut MC-21, which has a few hundred orders. Again, effectively all of the orders are Russian. It doesn't exactly help that nobody wants to work with Russia for reasons. >They [Embraer, Brazil] have been decades in the business, but they have not made any attempt to build a competitor for the A320 and B737. They are actively attempting precisely this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E…

These are not in any way competitors to A320 and B737. They are much smaller, with 2-2 seating, compared to 3-3 in the bigger jets. There are some routes and airlines where these are competitive; but they are not similar planes.

Mea culpa. Mostly. I relied on Wikipedia's characterization of the E2 series as similar to the Bombardier CSeries which was the subject of the American tariffs you reference. But the CSeries in fact became the A220, significantly smaller than the A320, so neither would it have been in the same category as the 737.

Both the E2 195 and the CSeries are well above the threshold of 100 passengers that Wikipedia uses as the maximum for a "regional jet", with the former holding up to 146 passengers and the latter up to 160. However, this is well behind the 737 MAX at 220 passengers. This classification apparently varies by source; 49 USC 41714 considers the maximum to be 71 passengers, while some sources take a threshold as high as 150 seats.

In any case, Embraer has gradually ramped up the maximum seating capacity on its planes, though you correctly point out that it has yet to take the middle-seat plunge.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#223

Post by cratermoon »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #165
cratermoon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometime in 2023 Alaska Airlines completed their efforts to sell off all their Airbus and Bombardier Q400 aircraft. Alaska acquired Virgin America and its all-Airbus fleet in 2016, and the Q400s were from their Horizon Air operations. The company sold the Airbus aircraft to American and retired the Bombardiers. The reason given at the time was the desire to simplify maintenance and parts logistics. Now Alaska's fleet…

What's missing from that explanation is that Virgin got horrific lease terms on their fleet because they were a fledgling airline. Had Alaska been the one to lease them the terms would've been much better and the financial benefit to dumping them would've bee much smaller. As Alaska is based in Seattle, they've been pushing this ridiculous all-Boeing nonsense for a while. Horizon still exists as a wholly owned subsid…

> As Alaska is based in Seattle, they've been pushing this ridiculous all-Boeing nonsense for a while

I do kind of wonder about the relationship with Boeing, with Boeing Field and the plant just up the road from Alaska's HQ at Sea-Tac. Cynically speaking I'd guess that Alaska and Boeing CEOs are golf buddies or something. Boeing's HQ is is now in Chicago (which may be part of the problem, as the article notes) so maybe not.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#224

Post by EndorphinRush »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #173
stg22 wrote: post #140

The role of McDonnell-Douglas is exaggerated. Boeing had achieved pretty close to a monopoly in the mid-1970s, but things had changed by the mid-1990s. 1. Domestic airlines protected by regulation had been effective monopolies and Boeing's engineer-led culture thrived in an environment where airlines didn't care about costs. But that environment died with airline deregulation in 1978 and an engineer-led culture made…

What's wild is that all this happened even with the NSA conducting industrial espionage on Airbus on behalf of Boeing and M-D.

This isn’t Reddit. Do better.

The article referencing this and Airbus is rather sensationalized and cuts off half the quote. This was said in reference to Airbus bribing foreign officials to buy from them. The full quote reads:

"When we have caught you at it, we haven’t said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you’re bribing and tell its officials that we don’t take kindly to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid (sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and your bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public scandal…"[5]

[5] R. James Woolsey, "Why We Spy on our Allies," Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2000.

The source unfortunately is locked behind a paywall so admittedly I don’t have the full context either.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#225

Post by KennyBlanken »

Solvency wrote: post #183
KennyBlanken wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wild is that all this happened even with the NSA conducting industrial espionage on Airbus on behalf of Boeing and M-D.

Source? Or... book even?

I don't mind being asked for a source on a difficult to research topic but this was covered in the mainstream press and you clearly didn't even attempt a google search.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#226

Post by Xixi »

danpalmer wrote: post #154
SkyMarshal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a far greater maintenance headache than "merely" various types by the same company. You would think so, but it’s actually not. I used to work at an airline in IT, and asked that question of the Ops folks when the airline was evaluating switching fleets to Airbus. They said switching fleets or operating a mixed fleet is not cost prohibitive. This was midsize regional airline fwiw.

I'm not an expert by any means, but this is almost the opposite of what I've heard, and the fact that most airlines are either Boeing or Airbus exclusively supports that idea. In particular, I've heard that maintenance and pilot training are big issues. If you've got half your pilots on the 737 and half on the A320, you're much less resilient to scheduling issues than having all of them on one or the other. Similarly…

The only airlines that are Boeing or Airbus exclusive are low costs (like Ryanair or Spirit Airlines) and tiny airlines operating a handful of planes. Otherwise it's all mixed fleet (Delta, Air France, JAL, ANA, Lufthansa, UA, etc.). If you separate wide-body and narrow-body then your statement is more correct: as going narrow-body Airbus and wide-body Boeing (or the other way around) is not rare.

The threshold I've read on airliners.net is at about 30 frames. Below that costs of a sub-fleet are too high and you should aim for commonality. Above 30 frames you should pick the best plane for your routes, regardless of commonality.

So for example running two fleets of 30 A350-900/1000, and 30 787-9/10 would be perfectly rational. But having 50 A350-900/1000 and introducing a sub-fleet of 10 787-10 is unlikely to be a wise choice, even for routes where the 787-10 would beat the A350-900.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#227

Post by TaylorAlexander »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #225
Solvency wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Or... book even?

I don't mind being asked for a source on a difficult to research topic but this was covered in the mainstream press and you clearly didn't even attempt a google search.

What's fun is I get results by just copying a phrase from your comment and googling it:

"NSA conducting industrial espionage on Airbus"

https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu-sn&q=...

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#228

Post by ethbr1 »

tiff_seattle wrote: post #204
Solvency wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? Or... book even?

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2003/06/12/airbuss-...

>> According to a European Parliament report, published in 2001, America's National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted faxes and phone calls between Airbus, Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi government in early 1994. The NSA found that Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official to secure a lion's share for Airbus in modernising Saudi Arabian Airlines' fleet. The planes were in a $6 billion deal that Edouard Balladur, France's then prime minister, had hoped to clinch on a visit to see King Fahd in January 1994. He went home empty-handed.

>> James Woolsey, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, recounted in a newspaper article in 2000 how the American government typically reacted to intelligence of this sort. “When we have caught you [Europeans]...we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption,” he wrote. Apparently this (and a direct sales pitch from Bill Clinton to King Fahd) swung the aircraft part of the deal Boeing's and McDonnell Douglas's way.

Wow, I knew national industry deals were murky, but damn.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#229

Post by naasking »

stg22 wrote: post #140

The role of McDonnell-Douglas is exaggerated. Boeing had achieved pretty close to a monopoly in the mid-1970s, but things had changed by the mid-1990s. 1. Domestic airlines protected by regulation had been effective monopolies and Boeing's engineer-led culture thrived in an environment where airlines didn't care about costs. But that environment died with airline deregulation in 1978 and an engineer-led culture made…

> an engineer-led culture made it more difficult to compete in a cost sensitive environment.

I know this is a common sentiment, but I don't quite get it. Engineering is often about optimizing multivariate functions, and cost is just another variable to optimize. If you frame it properly to engineers, they can solve cost problems too.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#230

Post by jethro_tell »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #195
lmm wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a stable business like groceries where you can be confident that your market will still be around in 25 years, sure. But that doesn't apply to a lot of businesses.

Save for perhaps the development of transporter technology or an unending deluge of viral pandemics, making airplanes for commercial aviation seems fairly predictable as to whether or not it'll exist in 25 years.

To some extent, but your airplane customer has quite a bit more flexibility than a grocery customer. I'm probably not going to buy French perishables but an airbus is a different story.
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