> Perhaps Boeing and Airbus are overengineering their aircraft and baking in economic rent to a degree that makes the airlines fundamentally incapable of sustai

> Perhaps Boeing and Airbus are overengineering their aircraft and baking in economic rent to a degree that makes the airlines fundamentally incapable of sustaining a profitable business model. Perhaps this industry can't actually survive with current technology and design methods absent some sort of government backstop or subsidy. Not sure. But the supply-side theory of this business seems like the most compelling (if not wholly complete) theory I've heard. It sounds like you were never in enigneering. You never had to deal with building reliable system in regards of safety and high availability. And you even don't know what is really happening in that industry. Just a small example Rollce Royce revolutionized that business years before IT invented the Cloud and XaaS (X as a service). RR is proving flying as a service since years. As an airline, you don't buy an airplane with engines. You as an airline decide and tell either Airbus or Boing what engines you like. Then RR (and others these days) don't sell you the engine. They sell you flight time. So RR is reponsible that the engines runs without downtimes. RR provide service staff at all major and many minor airports to be able to provide service. RR inventend the Internet of Things way before IT came even close to those ideas. Because to be able to sell airtime, RR needs to know about the status and diagnostics of those engines. Competitors to RR are doing the same since years. Then, a modern aircraft is stuffed with electronics to replace mechanics, like your car. Because mechanics are wheigt. With electronics this weight can be reduced. It also allowed "services" like autonomous flying. Different to the car industry, almost any modern airplane from Airbus and Boing is able to completely fly on its own inclusive take-off and landing. Only taxiing is not possible. But electronics have to problem of requiring redundancy to build highly available systems and all that with limited ressources. All way before IT has their 99.999 SAL and with much higher rates. We talk in these industries with undetected errors with a probability of 10^-15 and less.