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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

#61

Post by kamaal »

Pavilion2095 wrote: post #26
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…

> The interesting thing for me about this particular tale is the commercial genesis of Airbus and the incentives of the management team have led it to catch up despite Boeing have a 20-year head start. But Boeing introduced several new planes during these 20 years. If anything, they abandoned the idea of a new design and introduced 737 MAX as a response to the competition - A320neo.

>>But Boeing introduced several new planes during these 20 years.

Most of Boeing's Ls seem to have come from quality issues, and that seems to come downstream to cutting spending on engineering, testing and in general overall technical ecosystem.

There is no point in making 20 or even 200 new planes, if you don't make them well.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” - Steve Jobs

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

#63

Post by buyucu »

Gareth321 wrote: post #18
speedgoose wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, mostly based on Kerbal Space Program, the aircraft isn’t well balanced when equiped with modern engines. So you have to constantly apply some controls to fly, done by software. I love stupid car comparisons so imagine a car with a new engine that is more economical to run, but very heavy on the left so the car constantly want to turn left. But if you apply force to the steering wheel manually o…

The main issue arose because Boeing wanted to install larger, more fuel-efficient CFM LEAP-1B engines without changing the aircraft’s landing gear height too much (which would have required expensive redesigns of the fuselage and systems, triggering a new certification process). On earlier 737s, engines were already mounted quite far forward under the wing because of the aircraft’s low stance. The larger MAX engines…

Boeing already had a angle of attack second sensor with the original design of the Max, but they ignored it and made decisions only using a single sensor.

How anyone thought making critical decisions on a single sensor reading made sense is beyond me.

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

#64

Post by jhoechtl »

rsynnott wrote: post #33
jhoechtl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Uh yeah, my mistake

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

#65

Post by octo888 »

rsynnott wrote: post #60
octo888 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if we needed another reason not to fly Vueling...!

I mean as budget airlines go, they're actually not at all bad. I recently went to Barcelona on Vueling and returned on Ryanair (due to flight timings), and I was easily twice as irritated by the flight back vs the flight out. (They do, however, use Dublin airport's worst 'gate', 335, which is _actually_ a bus to a small fake terminal separate from any of the main ones.)

In my experience they're the worst. I have legs and 29" doesn't work for me. Twice they've had check-in so slow we all panicked thinking we would miss the flight. And they've been the worst I've ever experienced during IRROPS

Gate 335...I've experienced it hah

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

#66

Post by tempodox »

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.

> Monopolies will kill you.

But sadly not fast enough. The monopolies get to make everyone else miserable for far too long.

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

#67

Post by g9yuayon »

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.

And the competition from Airbus may not make Boeing better either. On the contrary, Boeing may well get into a death spiral and a slow but painful death. What competition really means is that incumbents can die without impacting customers as other more competent alternatives will fill the void.

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

#68

Post by SR2Z »

rsynnott wrote: post #31
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.

The main problem with the 737 is really just that it's old, and at every single turn Boeing has chosen to make incremental updates instead of redesigning it.

An issue like MCAS would be much less likely if the aircraft was designed to be fully fly-by-wire - but a fully fly-by-wire single-aisle would have to be recertified from scratch.

The problem with jetliner manufacturing is that you kind of have to bet the company on every single new model you release, just because the process of designing a new plane is so cumbersome and difficult that you can't really afford to be doing it very often.

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

#69

Post by SR2Z »

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.

I fly on 737 MAXes pretty often. They're still modern aircraft, and they still have a good safety record overall (consider that almost 2000 have been produced, and there have only been two crashes). Boeing will keep pumping them out and they will go on to be just as reliable as any other modern jetliner.

The flying public generally does not know or care what the model of plane they're on is. I almost never see anyone actually pull out the safety card from the seatback pocket to check. I'm not sure if it can be a reputational risk.

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

#70

Post by themafia »

PedroBatista wrote: post #54
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.

Boeing is going nowhere. One of the reasons Boeing’s bad behavior in last couple decades is also the reason they won’t die: The US Government

Yea. That's the other new phenomenon this new century has brought us, zombie corporations kept alive by feeding them good tax dollars after bad investments. We have to learn to bury our dead properly.
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