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United Airlines CEO says the airline will consider alternatives to Boeing

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

#211

Post by hakfoo »

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…

The build-or-buy debate makes sense with some context:

* There's a meaningful market for the components you buy

Does Spirit contract out to Airbus and Tupolev to build THEIR fuselages too? Are there other companies that could reasonably bid for the 737 contract? It feels like there isn't a real market here; they just divested a captive supplier for paperwork reasons.

* The stuff you're buying isn't your core competence

Sure: buy the fabric for the seat covers from a supplier. Hell, buy the whole seat. But airframes are sort of Boeing's core competency-- too much of the business rides on them to put them at arm's length.

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

#212

Post by up2isomorphism »

eitally wrote: post #5

Actions have consequences. Boeing decided they wanted to focus on maximizing profits rather than allowing organic growth to follow on continued high quality engineering and services. In regulated industries, especially where safety is of utmost importance, this is exceptionally risky. They F'd around and found out, and imho the only solution is leadership and strategy changes to shrink their business and refocus on b…

Boeing does not have much competition in a real sense for a long time, and when that happens, MBAs quickly take over the world. It is just in Flight industry this is too much to mess with and we see some consequences. But if we are comparing just messiness in terms of R&D to operations, probably none of FANG or something like AT&T are better than Boeing.

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

#213

Post by xtracto »

detourdog wrote: post #207

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.

This, I think this IS the real problem. In a capitalist society, there are markets that need to be heavily regulated. Health is one of them and aviation is another.

Private companies are going to do what they are supposed to do: Maximize shareholder value. So they are going to cut corners, minimize spending and maximize returns by EVERY MEAN. It is the job of the regulator to establish strict regulations and ensure that they are followed; otherwise, to REALLY execute punishments.

The fact that the FAA has been lax with Boeing is what has enabled them to cut corners to this point.

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

#214

Post by wolverine876 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #182
wolverine876 wrote: post #157

There's a dogma that regulation is de facto inefficient and bad generally, and I think it's almost universally accepted that that's the case for the self-interest of businesses. But like any dogma, any prejudice, it's wrong: Businesses have self-interest; it's overwhelming and they can't escape it and its biases (though they can and should moderate it, and some businesses do that much better than others). Regulation…

Hum... Regulators are inefficient. Regulations exist for stopping society from getting stuck into suboptimal Pareto equilibria. So you don't want regulators to do things that are not their minimum job, but anybody with a general argument against regulation is just trying to rob you.

> Regulators are inefficient.

What do you mean by that?

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

#215

Post by wolverine876 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #184
wolverine876 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give us examples of NASA contractor projects that have these problems?

With the contractors, we have: * The Space Shuttle - a death trap and reusable in no practical sense. Refurbishment involved near rebuild of large components. Often used as proof about how reusable rockets were not financially viable prior to F9's reliability. * SLS (ie the rocket to nowhere) - too expensive and too slow to build to be worth using unless literally mandated by law. Is too rough of a ride, Orion's scre…

Regarding JWST and Hubble, see the link to the JPL person's comment. The rest sounds like Musk's talking points, and life is too short...

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

#216

Post by drstewart »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #206
drstewart wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Nah. If we'd seen more Max deaths you'd be right, but the hundreds of thousands dead from the opioid crisis or the millions of lives destroyed from the war in drugs due to marijuana being on schedule one shows the FDA is beholden to the pharma and prison industries. Not trustworthy.

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

#217

Post by marcosdumay »

wolverine876 wrote: post #214
marcosdumay wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum... Regulators are inefficient. Regulations exist for stopping society from getting stuck into suboptimal Pareto equilibria. So you don't want regulators to do things that are not their minimum job, but anybody with a general argument against regulation is just trying to rob you.

> Regulators are inefficient. What do you mean by that?

The theory goes that the regulation organization has no reason to run at its best performance. Because it's necessarily a monopoly (works best when it's the government itself), and because there's a lot of pressure into its continued survival. So, as a rule, the work of regulators aren't optimized at all.

Of course, the real world is much noisier than that. But the most that free market advocates can claim is that regulators are inefficient, never that regulations are. Unless they are talking about some specific regulation.

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

#218

Post by SoftTalker »

lxgr wrote: post #154
SoftTalker wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines are contributary to this though. Boeing was working on a "clean redesign" new airliner to replace the 737. They shopped it around and nobody wanted it. They did not want to train mechanics and pilots on a new type. They wanted a "better 737." Then Airbus came out with the A320neo and that also pushed Boeing towards another incremental rework of the 737 since a brand new airliner takes 10 years to get designe…

The A220 seems fairly popular though, and that's a completely new type, although it's admittedly in a different class than the A320/737. Many airlines use both A320 and 737s in their fleets too, so they already have pilots rated for two different types. Trading one of these entirely for a 737 successor doesn't seem completely infeasible.

I think that individual pilots fly one type or the other, even if the airline operates multiple types. Flying is flying to a certain extent but the details, procedures, checklists, and emergency memory items are different particularly between Airbus and Boeing. I doubt there are many/any pilots that are hopping back and forth between 737s and A320s day to day.

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

#219

Post by wolverine876 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #217
wolverine876 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulators are inefficient. What do you mean by that?

The theory goes that the regulation organization has no reason to run at its best performance. Because it's necessarily a monopoly (works best when it's the government itself), and because there's a lot of pressure into its continued survival. So, as a rule, the work of regulators aren't optimized at all. Of course, the real world is much noisier than that. But the most that free market advocates can claim is that re…

I see what you meant.

> the most that free market advocates can claim is that regulators are inefficient

Beware of buying into their language. Regulations are necessary to free markets; unregulated markets can turn into monopolies or similar, making them very un-free.

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

#220

Post by switch007 »

akprasad wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #18

> alternatives to Boeing So, Airbus?

Also Embraer [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer

How so? They are mostly focussed on smaller capacity aircraft. They practically seem niche compared to Airbus and Boeing.

Though personally I would love a world full of E190s in a nice comfy configuration.

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