Why Airbus And Boeing Dominate The Sky

[Benny]

It just came out and it's very interesting

Ben

ps.: I have worked on the Q400 for some years, not telling everything here

 

 

[Rob Abernathy]

Thanks Benny.  Learned a lot from that video.

[Sundancer]

Interesting video, thank you.

Cheers Fred

[Matthew Kane]

The terminology Duopoly is the best description. I never liked the Airbus vs Boeing rivalry. I also appreciate Airbus acknowledging China as a future player. I see that as well.

Europeans are different in the sense that BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen help each other out to allow each other to compete globally to make Germany a better country whereas Chrysler GMC and Ford will compete aggressively against each other into almost bankruptcy.  Airbus was built on that with multinational support. I prefer the European approach, but I also prefer the Boeing models of aircraft, therefore I appreciate elements of both.

[John Dow]

Undercompetitive industry?  Seriously?  This reporter is seriously biased and uninformed.  In fact the duopoly is pretty irrelevant, the competition is as fierce as if there were half a dozen players.

 

The fact is there are major advantages in having such gigantic corporations in this unique industry.  Smaller firms could not commit the equivalent of a small country's GDP to the development of new airliners that meet the demands of the airlines around the world.  The upcoming 797 project is projected to need an investment of $20 billion.  Aren't many options to get a project like that off the ground.

 

The rest of the video doesn't even follow the initial premise so I only give it 5 out of 10.

[simurq]

I think the answer is clear if we spare some time to construct a logical chain of dependencies. It lies in the very nature of capitalism - the more it expands, the more resources it needs to digest to ensure uninterrupted growth (and progress?). I'm doubtful about the latter, hence putting it in brackets, since capitalism interprets progress in terms of physical growth only, when all other sectors of economy, including education, health care, agriculture, and even art and culture must serve the ultimate goal - growth and eventually profits! The keyword here is growth. Sentiments, emotions, humane values (remember Uncle XXX from the grocery around the corner, who'd add extra candies to your pack and ask how your parents were doing today?) do not count at all. Why? Again, capitalism isn't programmed to work like that. Nothing personal, only biznis. You can't milk a shark, can you? 

 

Now, like any other living organism on our planet, the growth requires constant feeding, like a cancer or gangrene growing by eating the healthy cells around until it's cut out. I mean money here. But not everybody has so much money. Ok, we have banks then. But the banks need to make sure that their money (plus interest!) is back in the foreseeable future. All right, we need laws then. Yeah, but bills aren't issued out of the blue, you need somebody to back your a** up in return for such big loans and R&D operations justifying the demand of the industry. In this case you gotta make a choice between a big private company or state ownership. Now, if you say NO to state ownership because it smells communism or for any other reason, you need to contact 'big guys' with lotta money and laws. Btw, it doesn't mean that the state is uninterested in your business - it'll appear on the horizon some day eventually.

 

But what about competition? Yeah, yeah... It's still possible initially, but as you grow, you become hypocritical and greedy. So, it turns out that a real competition, as righteously mentioned by John Dow, is only possible between the big guys because it has the biggest advantage - no need to waste time and resources on fighting hundreds of smaller companies instead of two or three larger ones. After all, fair (!) competition is healthy, as it helps combat laziness. It's in fact the same driving force taking our lazy a**es to streets or fitness clubs for jogging and workouts... 

 

So, why big guys? Because they have big contracts! How? Because they've got good lawyers that can find a common language with decision-makers. In short:

 

IDEA (airplane, social network, search engine, messenger) -> CONNECTIONS -> BANKS OR STATE -> LAWS

 

The rest is pathetic...

[Nick Cooper]

Thanks,

this discussion would be better continued somehere else, reddit perhaps.