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Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

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Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#31

Post by rsynnott »

Gareth321 wrote: post #13

It has been kind of shocking to see Boeing's decline in real time like this. My whole life I saw them as an unshakable example of U.S. engineering superiority. Reading articles from current and former employees, it sounds like the decline actually began decades ago. It took this long to raid the coffers, so to speak, of talent, good will, and QA redundancy. It is suggested that they are too big to fail, but it will b…

> My whole life I saw them as an unshakable example of U.S. engineering superiority.

I mean realistically in this particular category (narrow-bodies) they've essentially been playing catchup for the last _40 years_; ever since it was released they've really had trouble competing with the A320. Their inability to do basically anything right feels newer, but the 737 has long been a weak spot.

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#32

Post by rsynnott »

jraby3 wrote: post #14
mojuba wrote: post #5

Makes it even more impressive considering that the A320 is slightly more expensive.

Pricing on these planes is pretty complex. It's a stretch to say that airbus is unequivocally more expensive without comparing various options. Source: my brother worked for Boeing in sales and has been in the industry 30 years.

Indeed, but the practical result in this case is that the A320 is _much_ more expensive, because demand is far higher. Ryanair's big purchase of 737 MAX-10s a while back was at, at most, 50% of list price; that degree of discount isn't really happening for the A32x at the moment, I don't think.

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#33

Post by rsynnott »

jhoechtl wrote: post #28
duke_sam wrote: post #3

It’s impressive that Airbus caught up with Boeing after a 20 year head start. It sounds like Airbus’s bet on the future paid off but the article reads more like a PR piece than a case for why the A320 out competed the 737.

> It sounds like Airbus’s bet on the future paid of Well they did bet on the Dreamliner, fell on their nose and still recovered.

Dreamliner is the Boeing 787. Are you thinking of the A380 superjumbo?

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#34

Post by rsynnott »

rob74 wrote: post #8
duke_sam wrote: post #3

It’s impressive that Airbus caught up with Boeing after a 20 year head start. It sounds like Airbus’s bet on the future paid off but the article reads more like a PR piece than a case for why the A320 out competed the 737.

Yeah, that was exactly my feeling too when I read that Airbus has "finally" caught up to Boeing. With that head start, catching up was not something that could have been expected (unless Boeing would have replaced the 737, which they arguably should have done years ago already, but that's a different story). Of course, if you look into the details, things get more complicated, since the 737 had an in-house narrowbody…

Was the 757 _really_ meaningfully a 737 competitor? I've only ever seen them used for fairly long-haul flights; didn't think there was much role crossover.

(Was on a transatlantic one once. Never again.)

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#35

Post by pjjpo »

themafia wrote: post #4
PaulRobinson wrote: post #2

Complacency - particularly a sense of you being on top in the natural order of things - will kill you, one way or another. No empire has ever survived it from the Romans to, the British empire to, well, I guess Boeing. Business textbooks are rammed with stories of complacency gutting market-dominating corporates (IBM, Kodak, Xerox), and the big reckoning seems to be coming for the likes of Boeing, GM, Ford, and many…

Competition keeps entities honest. Monopolies will kill you. In Boeing's case both figuratively for the business and literally for it's customers.

Looking at their general stock performance, I'd say it's actually only the customers being killed.

Agree with the sentiments of the sibling posts that monopolies seem as great for business as ever.

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#36

Post by MandieD »

rsynnott wrote: post #34
rob74 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was exactly my feeling too when I read that Airbus has "finally" caught up to Boeing. With that head start, catching up was not something that could have been expected (unless Boeing would have replaced the 737, which they arguably should have done years ago already, but that's a different story). Of course, if you look into the details, things get more complicated, since the 737 had an in-house narrowbody…

Was the 757 _really_ meaningfully a 737 competitor? I've only ever seen them used for fairly long-haul flights; didn't think there was much role crossover. (Was on a transatlantic one once. Never again.)

Yikes, I remember my one and only 757 transatlantic flight, too. Every single little bump; truly a bus in the sky.

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#37

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

closewith wrote: post #24
h4kunamata wrote: post #19

Poised?? Only if a company is completely blind to buy Boeing planes in 2025! It does not matter if the places are millions of dollars cheaper, all the money spent with lawsuits and lawyers when things go sideways, plus the airline name dragged to shit, I don't think it is worth.

The airline with the best safety record in the world, Ryanair, is an all-Boeing 737 fleet (with the exception of the Lauda Airbus A320-200s) that has never had a fatal accident, despite over a 120 Boeing 737 MAX-8s currently operating.

It’s probably easy to find a subset of airlines that would work for either airline.

But that RyanAir didn’t happen to have a version of the design that was extremely unsafe doesn’t mean that the family of planes is safer than the competition. It just means that it got lucky that it didn’t have the flawed planes.

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#38

Post by egeres »

pxndxx wrote: post #20

Vueling, the largest airline in Spain is actually shifting from the 320 to an all Boeing 737 MAX fleet in the coming years. I was really sad to hear that given it's size and presence in Europe.

This decision was actually made at IAG (International Airlines Group) which is the parent company of Vueling, British Airways, Iberia etc... not Vueling per se. The main motivation behind it is the price drop on the 737 MAX line. I'm surprised that switching to Boeing it's even worth it considering given these companies mostly fly Airbus planes so their pilots, supply chains for maintenance etc will need an overhaul

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#39

Post by [deleted] »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #37
closewith wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The airline with the best safety record in the world, Ryanair, is an all-Boeing 737 fleet (with the exception of the Lauda Airbus A320-200s) that has never had a fatal accident, despite over a 120 Boeing 737 MAX-8s currently operating.

It’s probably easy to find a subset of airlines that would work for either airline. But that RyanAir didn’t happen to have a version of the design that was extremely unsafe doesn’t mean that the family of planes is safer than the competition. It just means that it got lucky that it didn’t have the flawed planes.

[deleted]

Re: Airbus A320 Poised to Overtake Boeing 737 as Most-Delivered Commercial Airliner

#40

Post by alexey-salmin »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #17
themafia wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competition keeps entities honest. Monopolies will kill you. In Boeing's case both figuratively for the business and literally for it's customers.

>Monopolies will kill you. So when is it gonna kill Google?

Not an OP, but I think the search monopoly is likely to end within the next 10 years. There were fundamental reasons that kept it alive and all of them are becoming irrelevant at various speeds.

Not that it must kill Google, they can still pivot and e.g. Google Cloud is already non-negligible in their revenue structure. But I'm relatively confident that search/ads duo won't be their main earner anymore just like Windows is not the main earner of Microsoft.

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