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Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

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Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#301

Post by dylan604 »

Xixi wrote: post #226
danpalmer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

This isn’t true for the reasons you are implying. Most of these smaller carriers fly to regional airports with smaller runways and smaller demand which the 737 specifically is ideal for (since that’s what it was designed). It’s also one of the most common planes out there, so when smaller carriers are looking to buy, that’s what’s available. It’s not that they are looking to be a single vendor airline. It’s just that the one vendor made the plane they need.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#302

Post by dylan604 »

bloomingeek wrote: post #293
Xixi wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a few misc planes on the chopping block in the future" sounds somewhat disingenuous: we are talking of a fleet of 477 Airbus A320s [1] (family, mostly A319s and A321s), nearly 50% of American Airlines entire fleet. This includes 80 A321 NEO, and with a further order for 50 A321XLRs I strongly doubt these are on the chopping block. The A321 NEO is very hard to beat on transcon: AA needs the subtype, so it's here to s…

Which is basically what I wrote.

No. You wrote something that read as if AA is looking to replace all Airbus equipment. That was replied to with clarification that AA is looking to replace some of the older Airbus equipment but clearly not all of it. Now, your retort reads as a smarty pants chiding at someone else implying you didn’t actually know everything and smarting from it.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#303

Post by naasking »

ks1723 wrote: post #300
naasking wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For large endeavors (building a plane) it is impossible to formulate all contributions to all quality criteria/cost and constraints into a technical engineering optimization problem. It's obviously possible, SpaceX vs. NASA is an existence proof. Maybe you have something specific in mind when you say "technical engineering optimization problem", like a formula you can minimize mathematically to account for every li…

I agree with you and you basically make the same point as wanted to make: you can’t just frame it as an engineering problem, it involves accountants and bosses. So your original statement „If you frame it properly to engineers, they can solve cost problems too.“ is too simplistic in my view.

> you basically make the same point as wanted to make: you can’t just frame it as an engineering problem, it involves accountants and bosses.

I disagree that I was making this point. I said it currently involves accountants and bosses, and I'm saying it doesn't have to because you can make it an engineering problem. The accountants and bosses don't have any unique skills or insight here that aren't in principle also accessible to the engineers.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#304

Post by jewayne »

shiroiuma wrote: post #287
shiroiuma wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what things would be like now if someone went back in time and assassinated Jack Welch as a child....

I wonder why I'm being down-voted for this. Obviously I'm not advocating murder unless you really believe in time travel; it's a thought experiment about how the present would be different if this individual had not gotten to the position he did in the corporate world, similar to the questions about the effects of murdering Hitler before he joined the Nazis. My thought is that taking out baby Jack Welch probably woul…

> this gave them the luxury of building these companies into powerhouses that didn't have much competition to worry about and that could be idealistic and also wasteful. But this advantage eroded after several decades so it eventually became more important to maximize profitability and this required (or facilitated) someone like Welch.

You've got it backwards. The current state of US business is ideologically driven and wasteful. Two economies that were wrecked during WWII -- Germany and Japan -- are less shareholder driven than the US and therefore actually able to produce quality goods and services.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#305

Post by missedthecue »

drtgh wrote: post #291
missedthecue wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think would not be exactly political. The part where the plutocracy benefits the interests of a few pockets would certainly be political, but by other part, the major aircraft manufacturers in the EU and the UE, build civil aircraft as well as military ones. As I understand it, to torpedo these companies by dumping prices would be to indirectly torpedo the EU's and the UE's defense aircraft production. A cost based…

Why do you assume out of hand they would be low quality? We see in other industries, such as the Chinese military industry, that they are capable of producing a lot of high quality air frames. Their stealth J-20 has never had an accident in the 13 years it's been flying and they are building 120 per year, and flying them tens of thousands of hours per year.

You can look at other models. Their Xian Y-20 freighter has also never had an accident and flies tens of thousands of hours per year.

This isn't 1992 anymore where the only things coming out of China are plastic molded injection crap.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#306

Post by Xixi »

dylan604 wrote: post #301
Xixi wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This isn’t true for the reasons you are implying. Most of these smaller carriers fly to regional airports with smaller runways and smaller demand which the 737 specifically is ideal for (since that’s what it was designed). It’s also one of the most common planes out…

On the lower end the 737 has competition from Embraer, Bombardier (and now Airbus through the CSeries/A220), ATR, etc. Turboprops in general (and thus ATR) are not popular in the US, but they are quite popular elsewhere.

But the specific example I had in mind is Air Tahiti Nui, and its grand total of four 787-9. It’s simply an airline specialized in bringing tourists to Tahiti from far, far away. Hence high density 787-9.

But even a very small airline like Air Senegal has a pretty diversified fleet, of 9 aircrafts…

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#307

Post by JohnFen »

epistasis wrote: post #234
naasking wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed. Maybe I have become too much of a PHB, but I find that engineers (or scientists in my case) really love having cost as one of the visible metrics to optimize for, and will generally do a fantastic job at evaluating it amongst quality concerns. At least much better than management can do.

I agree. In most of the places I've worked, devs have always taken costs into account as part of the design and development decisions, to the degree that they can. But at most companies, things like cost, expected ROI, etc. are never revealed to the devs, leaving it to guesswork.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#308

Post by JohnFen »

close04 wrote: post #268
salty_biscuits wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are often surprisingly ruthless when given cost as part of the objective as well.

All the good engineers I know will prioritize the product though. "Accountants" will prioritize the cost. The "cheapest good product" and the "best cheap product" are almost never the same. The the latter is what you want to pay for but the former is what you want to have.

I think this is an oversimplification. Engineers prioritize the product, as they should, but what the best solution is depends on the constraints, and that includes things like cost of production, target price point, etc.

"Good, cheap, fast: pick two" is a law of the universe that most engineers deeply understand, and good devs will produce the best product they can according to which two are chosen.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#309

Post by danielhep »

cratermoon wrote: post #124
inamberclad wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder how that will work out for Southwest after this.

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…

I flew on an Alaska branded Embraer craft a few days ago. Do you mean only those operated directly by Alaska? I think mine was operated by Sky West.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#310

Post by ks1723 »

naasking wrote: post #303
ks1723 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and you basically make the same point as wanted to make: you can’t just frame it as an engineering problem, it involves accountants and bosses. So your original statement „If you frame it properly to engineers, they can solve cost problems too.“ is too simplistic in my view.

> you basically make the same point as wanted to make: you can’t just frame it as an engineering problem, it involves accountants and bosses. I disagree that I was making this point. I said it currently involves accountants and bosses, and I'm saying it doesn't have to because you can make it an engineering problem. The accountants and bosses don't have any unique skills or insight here that aren't in principle also…

Ok, then I misunderstood, and we can only agree to disagree. I think there need to be people caring about organizational stuff which you cannot fully formulate as engineering problem: setting deadlines, putting teams together, determining team leads, determining how much budget is spent on which branch or discipline or even which part development. In addition, even more technical problems like calculating and comparing costs resulting from parts-Design over the full product lifecycle (design, manufacturing, usability, maintenance, repair, disposal) is not feasible today. And using approximations amounts to making assumption and thereby decisions up-front, where you usually cannot oversee all their implications. Designing complex machinery and shaping the organization which builds them is hellishly complex.
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