Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 231 posts

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#201

Post by SauciestGNU »

anderber wrote: post #190
kilroy123 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer the A320neo to any 737. The Boeing 787-800 and 777-300s. The A330 is fine as well. It's been a long time but it's a joy to fly on a 747. My dream is to fly on an A380 one day.

Same here, I'd love to fly on an A380. I've flow plenty 747s as a kid, and I have great memories of them. The last one I flew was an A330-neo that I thought was really nice as well. Looking forward to fly the new Embraer E190 at some point.

Last time I was on an Embraer, the emergency exit door alarm was buzzing until the plane left the ground and the fuselage flexed enough to get a seal. The fight itself was fine but that left a questionable impression.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#202

Post by dotnet00 »

WalterBright wrote: post #194
dotnet00 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and between the end of Apollo and the emergence of "new space" companies like SpaceX, we saw them get taken for a ride by those very subcontractors with absurdly overpriced cost-plus projects that were always over budget, late and did the bare minimum to meet requirements. Funnily, even with NASA's example, we have several instances of Boeing screwing up everything in favor of short term gains. ULA had to be 'forced'…

> I'm also not really sure how NASA fits considering that they have no monetary profit motive. The point is that subcontracting is not the problem.

The point they're making though is that subcontracting in the way that Boeing did is part of the problem. Not all subcontracting involves stripping off core components of your company to pay them rent instead.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#203

Post by wrsh07 »

rsynnott wrote: post #95
wrsh07 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think this is good news for Boom? Honestly they could pivot from supersonic to just "small airplanes at scale made well" and they could grow into a new American industrial giant

There's plenty of choice for _small_ planes; it's really 737-size and up where it's a choice of two manufacturers.

I agree with this, my (possibly incorrect) line of thinking is that the same was sort of true for electric cars. At the high end there were options, but there weren't good mass market options (Tesla helped change that)

You could sort of imagine that airlines use this as an opportunity to fund promising smaller companies that want to scale (I'm not sure if Boom is more excited to become a major manufacturer or for the flight speed change)

Regardless, given the friction in training pilots to fly new aircraft, airlines losing faith in Boeing should make them more likely to consider it which removes a huge moat

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#204

Post by potatolicious »

itsoktocry wrote: post #135
potatolicious wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what. I'm sympathetic to the notion that not every Bad Thing is because of "maximizing profits", but in this case you can point to incredibly specific things, done to maximize profits, that directly caused this crisis. After acquiring McDonnell, Boeing went on a spree of divestments where parts plants that supplied them were spun off into independent vendors. One of the biggest of these is Spirit Aerosystems, wh…

> After acquiring McDonnell, Boeing went on a spree of divestments where parts plants that supplied them were spun off into independent vendors. This isn't default bad. Do you build everything at your company, or buy some things? Specialization can be a boon. > with Boeing having relatively little leverage in improving this state of affairs (one may argue that it's not terribly interested in improving the state of af…

> "This isn't default bad. Do you build everything at your company, or buy some things? Specialization can be a boon."

You seem to be under the impression I'm arguing a point that isn't in the text of my post. It's not material whether this is "default bad" - what matters is that it was bad in this specific instance.

The claim isn't "all outsourcing bad", the claim is a very specific "Boeing's outsourcing of these specific parts directly led to the safety crisis the company is facing now".

This is particularly salient as pre-divestment, what is now Spirit, did not have a notable QC problem. Boeing has in the past faced safety crises over the design of its aircraft, but not their manufacture.

Not everything is a proxy argument. If I mean my argument to be generalizable, I will state it clearly rather than leave it up to others to impute.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#205

Post by gn4d »

sagarkamat wrote: post #15
zwieback wrote: post #9

Other than Airbus, are there any alternatives?

Chinese COMAC seems to be on the verge of selling meaningful numbers to chinese airlines. Wont be surprised if they are a very viable competitor in ~20 years which isn’t much in the aviation world where backlogs span a decade

Was just about to type this. Hopeful for COMAC. Of course your post brought out a bunch of brainwashed racists, though.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#206

Post by inferiorhuman »

drstewart wrote: post #156
inferiorhuman wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you're not being intentionally obtuse: the FDA makes some decisions purely out of politics (e.g. many schedule 1 drugs) and they make other decisions based on higher tolerance of risk in certain situations. Perhaps the FAA should slap a black box warning on the 737 to regain credibility.

You're arguing my point. Both anti-vaxxers and anti-Maxers believe the regulatory agencies are corrupt and politicking, therefore they substitute their own scientific opinions where they feel like it.

Nah. The FDA offers a nuanced approach making criticism far less reasonable. The FAA presents the flying public with an all or nothing approach. It's entirely reasonable to criticize the regulatory capture that got us here. It's also quite reasonable to be dissatisfied with the status quo at the FAA for the time being.

If we'd seen more thalidomide babies, or if people were being harmed en masse by vaccines perhaps things would be more comparable. But they're not so they're not. Besides, the FAA is explicitly tasked with promoting the business interests of American companies while also promoting safety. That's quite different than the FDA, and a more reasonable comparison would be between the FDA and NTSB.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#207

Post by detourdog »

I think that Boeing is less than half the problem. The US-FAA has sold the whole country down the river with the lack of oversight. How that happened is the problem. We expect Boeing to try to draw outside the lines. The FAA helping them do that is the problem.

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#209

Post by rsynnott »

wrsh07 wrote: post #203
rsynnott wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of choice for _small_ planes; it's really 737-size and up where it's a choice of two manufacturers.

I agree with this, my (possibly incorrect) line of thinking is that the same was sort of true for electric cars. At the high end there were options, but there weren't good mass market options (Tesla helped change that) You could sort of imagine that airlines use this as an opportunity to fund promising smaller companies that want to scale (I'm not sure if Boom is more excited to become a major manufacturer or for the…

> At the high end there were options, but there weren't good mass market options (Tesla helped change that)

Eh? No, that’s not right; it’s almost the opposite of what happened. Before the last decade, there was ~nothing. Around 2010, the Tesla Model S (high end), the Nissan Leaf (mass-market), Renault Zoe (mass-market), VW eGolf and eUp (mass-market) all showed up within a year of each other. The first Tesla mass-market car launched in 2017… kind of; realistically, 2019 (that’s when the ‘standard trim’, ie affordable, Model 3 showed up). In 2019/2020, the first high-end electric cars from conventional manufacturers also start showing up (e-Tron, Polestar etc).

Re: United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

#210

Post by WanderPanda »

lumost wrote: post #147
itsoktocry wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After acquiring McDonnell, Boeing went on a spree of divestments where parts plants that supplied them were spun off into independent vendors. This isn't default bad. Do you build everything at your company, or buy some things? Specialization can be a boon. > with Boeing having relatively little leverage in improving this state of affairs (one may argue that it's not terribly interested in improving the state of af…

There is something different that happens in a vertically integrated engineering firms. In the event of a critical defect - very senior engineers will find out the specific people who caused the defect, and vet that the appropriate corrective actions have taken place. Likewise, if you do your job well on sub-assembly 529ca - you have the opportunity to be noticed and move up to bigger projects without changing firms…

You raise a very good point. If you join a company with the goal of retiring in the same company after a a 40-year career, the incentives are much better aligned than with contractors. Maybe the demise of the 40-year career in modern companies is one of the bigger elephants in the room
Post reply on HN