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Saudi airline cancels $6B Boeing order in favor of Airbus
- bradhe 7y agoBoeing's MAX order backlog is 8 years long still.
- jankassens 7y agoI don't understand this backlog for airplanes (Boeing and Airbus): Is this kind of backlog normal in industrial scale? Is it not viable to scale up production with the massive tail of suppliers that would all need to scale up?
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoNo. Airplane manufacturing is extremely complex and has dozens of subcontractors who all work at their own rate. Boeing is not integrated like SpaceX
- jandrese 7y agoWhich is honestly part of their problem. They have discovered that integration and testing costs scale with the multiple of the number of subcontractors you use. The money you save on upfront development costs ends up being burned on extended integration testing and general inefficiencies (time zone/language/culture differences). Granted, the -MAX8's problem seems to stem from the need to race Airbus to the market and not having the time to do proper integration tests, but the difficulty with testing is directly related to complications in this development model. Also, Boeing is way overdue for a proper 737 replacement. A 737 sized bird using 787 design principles/technology and built to properly handle the massive engines that modern customers crave.
- bradhe 7y ago> A 737 sized bird using 787 design principles/technology and built to properly handle the massive engines that modern customers crave. They should definitely make that! They could call it the...737 MAXIMUM SIZE. Or maybe the 7373 MAX for short?
- Havoc 7y agoThe issue lies in viewing it as a backlog. It's not since it implies someone's behind schedule. It's more like long range planning with commitments as defined by airlines 10 year plans. They __don't__ want the planes now like a backlog would imply, they want them in 2021. Also, schedules tend to align with the cycle of the industry. New planes take time to develop etc. So everything happens on a year(s) schedule, incl delivery schedules. >Is it not viable to scale up production And then what are you gonna do with all that infrastructure sitting idle for 8 years in between your aircraft generations? Sometimes slow is the profitable approach
- jimbob45 7y agoThen in that case, does that mean that Boeing won't lose any money provided that they keep their backlog full for the duration of the aircraft's life cycle? (maybe 20 years). Seems like they have many years to fill the hole made by Saudi Arabia at no real loss.
- Havoc 7y ago>Boeing won't lose any money provided that they keep their backlog full for the duration of the aircraft's life cycle? The 737 (all variants) is/was/will be massively popular so I'd imagine as a project it's probably still profitable. The danger here is reputation. Boeing has in the space of a year ruined a multi-decade reputation. I mentioned this before, but all these articles scream underlying institutional culture problems. Remember the one a month or so ago about a Boeing engineer saying he's uncomfortable letting family fly on a Boeing plane? Forget a lost order, that's existential crisis territory for an organization.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> They __don't__ want the planes now like a backlog would imply, they want them in 2021. Well, that's not 100% accurate. Airlines always want the most fuel-efficient plane now, but will settle for ASAP. With leasing, they can dump their old planes and lease new models. That's why the Singapore A380s were chopped up this year - they were heavy and thus not fuel efficient. The DC-1/DC-2 was developed for TWA because Boeing promised their entire 247 production run to United.
- toast0 7y agoAdding an additional line is a large capital expense for the manufacturer itself and probably most of its suppliers; and once you make it through the backlog, you would likely need to idle it. It's better for Boeing to sell 400 737s a year every year for ten years, than 800 a year for two years, then 300 a year for the next eight years.
- jjwhitaker 7y agoFor context, Boeing is making about 50 of these planes per month to the point that when they were grounded but production continued they had Tetris'd unpainted planes across the site including in staff parking areas. I hadn't seen much news on production slowing but they have massive orders to fill at designated times.
- jacques_chester 7y agoApparently they did that in the 90s and wound up stepping on their own feet. It turned out that it's more profitable to make the buyers wait. Plus there's a healthy negotiating chip: pay us more and jump the queue.
- sebazzz 7y agoI can imagine airliners have their entire maintenance "street" completely tailored to maintain their Boeing aircraft, so unless you already happen to have Airbus, a switch is not likely it seems. Can anyone shed some light on that?
- avocado4 7y agoThe rest of Saudi airline's fleet is all Airbus so it makes sense for them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- peteretep 7y agoVery few serious airlines are running exclusively Boeing or Airbus
- alkonaut 7y agoThat's usually because of age (at some point in history they got a deal, or one manufacturer didn't have a model etc), or because of mergers. What's certain is that all airlines dream of having only one manufacturer. If they have multiple, they often try to make one hub service one type of plane, e.g. fly all their Airbuses past one airport and all their Boeings past another (For competing models such as A320 vs 737)
- magduf 7y agoThis incident should show why only having one manufacturer supply your planes is a bad idea.
- alkonaut 7y agoMost that have multiple providers probably have e.g. Airbus widebody jets and boeing narrowbody jets etc. Most airlines don't have an equal spread of A320/737's for example. A good idea even when all planes are the same manufacturer is probably to not have all planes being the same model so they all get grounded in case of a discovery (An NG 737 is not the same as an older one which is not the same as a MAX etc)
- pcunite 7y agothis is the first instance of an airline publicly switching an aircraft order away from Boeing ... Airbus doesn’t have the production capacity to take much market share away from Boeing ... If this plane doesn’t start flying again before Christmas ... It's not likely Boeing is going out of business. Is the purpose of articles like this to effect a wall street trader? Not into that personally, just wondering. Why is NBC putting pressure on Boeing? For the clicks?
- pgeorgi 7y ago> Why is NBC putting pressure on Boeing? For the clicks? It's one of the cases where screwing up your product has consequences, even for a huge nation-state-backed duopolist. That happens so rarely it's newsworthy.
- JAlexoid 7y agoWell.... DUH! The stock hasn't been affected enough for the top management to feel the pain.
- rootusrootus 7y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375264
- mc32 7y agoBoeing deserves to get pushback like this. They really let everyone down, but most problematic was not having public safety foremost in their design of this airframe. That is inexcusable. It’s too bad there isn’t a better whistleblowing mechanism for these kinds of questionable design decisions for critical infrastructure. I can only hope the certification process will become more rigorous and require the approval of multiple aviation regulators before it’s declared airworthy.
- jandrese 7y agoThe way MCAS handled its two sensor inputs is basically malpractice. It's mind boggling to me that someone developing that system thought it was an acceptable mode of operation.
- linuxftw 7y agoHopefully someone is successful in suing for discovery. It might not have been 'mind boggling' it might have been deliberate action by management to cut costs, reduce MTBF (because 2 sensors fails more often), or the fact that 'Boeing' didn't design the system so much as an amalgamation of cut-rate 3rd party contractors with a 'yes-person' 'project manager' at the helm vs an actual engineer.
- trhway 7y ago>deliberate action by management to ... MTBF (because 2 sensors fails more often) if that happens to be real case, it may become the textbook case of perverted metrics/cobra effect.
- matt-attack 7y agoIt’s actually an interesting concept. As a naive buyer I might think that lower MTBF is better and represents and improvement in product specs. However in this case it clearly comes at a cost of reduced reliability, since there is no backup. However “reliability” seems the same as “MTBF” to my naive brain, so I’m struggling to resolve this apparent paradox.
- davidw 7y ago"Saudi airline gives Boeing the chop"
- stirfrykitty 7y agoAirbus make a superior product anyway. They've gotten FbW down to a science and were the first to use it, as well as glass cockpits. The pilots generally like Airbus planes better. They have better safety controls, more room for the pilots, and more comfortable for pilots and passengers. Boeing seems almost last century in comparison.
- elif 7y agoHm my experience has been different. I'm always delighted to see that 37 nose at my gate. I can't speak for pilots but as a passenger, I've been in an a319 that had enough pressure issues to give me sharp pain in my ears that lingered for a day, and annecdotally they feel more prone to turbulence with their big wings. I'm too tall for either of their seats, so perhaps that's why I don't notice the comfort you speak of.
- mikeash 7y agoNote that seats are installed by the airline and can vary substantially even within the same model of plane.
- o-__-o 7y agoPressure issues can happen on any plane, not limited to airbus. Pilots are aware of the pressure inside the plane and they make judgement whether to continue or not. Your beef is with the pilots.
- rkangel 7y ago> pilots generally like Airbus planes better Do you have a citation for that? I've heard anecdotal stuff in both directions.
- starpilot 7y agoHe made it up. I flagged his comment as misinformation.
- 7y ago
- elcomet 7y agoIt's important to keep a good competition between Airbus and Boeing. I hope Boeing can get up and fix their crap. (And I'm European)
- magduf 7y agoI'd rather see Boeing go out of business at this point; they've proven they can't be trusted. What we need is more competition from other manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi in Japan. If Boeing goes under, some other, more trustworthy company could buy up their assets and start building better-engineered planes.
- adventured 7y agoI disagree. Besides, it's not very realistic as an outcome. I think the HN revenge fantasy thing going on about Boeing right now has taken a turn for the comical. Post after post on the front page with comments about the desire for Boeing to die. It's a bit much at this point. HN's record on such predictions is notorious anyway. Facebook didn't fail, despite all the HN predictions and bad outcome fantasy posts. Quite the opposite. Its user base keeps expanding, its sales keep climbing, its power keeps growing. Users did not abandon it en masse. None of what was commonly predicted on HN occurred. Intel - another common target of bad outcome fantasies - isn't failing, their profits are at all-time highs. That's despite the constant HN posts for years about that being inevitable. AMD is due to crush them any minute now, Intel is toast. Boeing is a $200 billion valuation company - which earned $10b in profit last year - that is strategically critical to the world's largest economy and sole superpower (the one that also happens to have a $750 billion military that depends on Boeing). It's a company with one of the grandest, longest and most positive histories in all of aviation. The notion that two crashes should end that is absurd. Boeing isn't going anywhere, not under any circumstances most likely. As things actually are, over many decades it has earned its place. If any company deserves an opportunity to re-earn trust, Boeing would qualify.
- mullingitover 7y ago> that is strategically critical to the world's largest economy and sole superpower (the one that also happens to have a $750 billion military that depends on Boeing) This part is really all that matters. Boeing isn't a company as much as it's an organ of the state. Regardless of how inferior their engineering is, they won't be allowed to fail.
- nradov 7y agoForeign aircraft purchases are highly politicized and this decision probably has nothing to do with product quality, safety, or price. More likely it's a signal from the Saudi royal family to the US Congress that they ought to stop being so critical over minor issues like the murder of a US resident or bombing civilian targets in Yemen.
- FrozenTuna 7y agoExactly. My first thought, "OK, so can we whine and bash Airbus now for doing business with Saudi Arabia like we'd been doing to other companies?"
- nickserv 7y agoIf they're civilian planes, what's the problem?
- magduf 7y agoJust how connected to the royal family is "Flyadeal"? This doesn't look like a very large airline, it's a smaller low-cost one, and this order was for only 30 planes. The article even says one big reason they were able to make this move is because of the small size of the order.
- hrasyid 7y agoIt is owned by Saudia, which is owned by the government.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- megablast 7y agoReally? Or was it about the recent sales to UAE?
- nradov 7y agoThat might have also been a factor. They'll never openly state the real reason so we can only guess.
- dmix 7y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20375264
- tus88 7y agoWho here would fly on a Max 8? If not, why should Saudi buy them?
- magduf 7y agoI sure don't want to fly on one, and any company that buys Airbus planes instead of Boeing planes is more likely to get my business. As the article shows, numerous polls show I'm not alone in this sentiment.
- sseveran 7y agoI would fly on one. However since I fly mostly on delta its not likely that I will send up doing so.
- alkonaut 7y agoI have flown them many times and I'll fly them again as soon as authorities consider them safe to fly. I'm not going to be happy about the flight being operated with a MAX (as I was the last time) - but I also would never start trying to avoid MAX flights by buying more expensive tickets or flying more miles to reach my destination while avoiding a certain aircraft. If anything, what I'll try to avoid is dodgy airlines, not dodgy planes (at least not ones from Boeing and Airbus). Most of the airlines I'll keep avoiding operate in places I likely won't fly anyway - such as some domestic russian flights.
- bb101 7y agoOnly if I had no other choice. When choosing my flights, I'd actively avoid the Max and if my flight was changed to use a Max, I'd look around for an alternative date or time.
- Grue3 7y agoIt would be irrational not to. You're far more likely to die in a car accident.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y agoDid you correct that stat for the Max?
- gumby 7y agoIn the early days of the 340 (one of the first commercial FBW aircraft) I held back for a couple of years but it's turned out to be great. Now I'm suspicious of all 737/787 flights. Thank goodness it's easy these days to figure out what kind of aircraft you're booking. I wonder when sites like Kayak will add a toggle so you can include/exclude certain models of aircraft from your itinerary.
- pdx_flyer 7y agoIt's actually more of a pragmatic decision than it is one of safety for Flyadeal. They were slated to take the 737MAX deliveries starting in 2021 and with deliveries currently halted, there is no way that will happen (especially if the airplane isn't cleared soon). Flyadeal is trying to grow and they need planes to do it. Airbus can deliver on the 2021 date without issue and Flyadeal was likely given a slight discount to pick up some empty production slots.
- lcfcjs2 7y agoMaybe they should stop hiring off-shore engineers and pay them basically nothing.
- jjwhitaker 7y agoFrom how these contracts were explained to me, this is a win for Boeing (probably). Most of these contracts have an initial deposit then payment on delivery however if the order is cancelled, Boeing keeps any deposit and possibly some or all of the full payment (as a cancellation fee like with most cell phone contracts). Now Bowing already has the initial cost of manufacturing partially or fully covered AND gets to sell the plane or simply not manufacture it for pure profit.
- JAlexoid 7y agoThese contracts aren't exactly cookie cutter privacy policy agreements. Boeing isn't going to profit off these cancellations in any case. There's a lot of money in support as well.
- mensetmanusman 7y agoEvents like this really put into focus the value of engineering. Imagine that management had hired an elite team of 50 safety focused individuals and paid them a billion dollars. They would still be profitable! Totally reminds me of exploding Samsung phones in terms of the small incremental investment that would have saved billions.
- P_I_Staker 7y agoAgreed, but that may not hold true at scale. It's like saying a $50 taxi ride is cheaper than a DUI. That only holds true for around 20-200 rides, and I've seen estimates that most people do more than that before they get caught (of course there's other ethical and practical reasons not to). If I was to guess, there's a ton of this kind of stuff going on, and most of the time nothing happens. Not all boneheaded or sketchy engineering decisions cause catastrophe (or get caught). Also, my understanding is that this was a deliberate choice by Boeing, so more "safety engineers" wouldn't necessarily help. This is frequently the case with engineering disasters. The problems are with politics, management, even communication.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y agoBoeing should've designed a proper plane instead of hacking an ancient airframe... and doing so with gross incompetence.