10 ms·
Why would Airbus be different?
by trimbo 7y ago
Why would Airbus be different?
- whatshisface 7y agoIt's not, and it could easily have gone the other way. By not having any competition or diversification, countries expose themselves to tremendous risk: the balance of the aerospace industry rested on a coin flip and the US bet tails. Without the cronyism, we could have had many separate raffle tickets against Europe's one.
- ahartmetz 7y agoIt seems like Airbus currently is different. Maybe the friction from it being very multinational prevented it from becoming like Boeing, maybe it will have its own big scandal in a month. Who knows. But currently, Airbus does look better.
- rsynnott 7y agoI mean, it wasn’t a safety scandal, but the A380 was a huge disaster for the company. I’d be more comfortable getting on a notional A360 than a notional 797, but both companies have self-harmed recently.
- CydeWeys 7y agoIt lost them money but it didn't hurt their brand. Those are great planes to fly in as a passenger, they're just not profitable in the end for Airbus. Boeing can't even keep its newest plane in the skies, and may have killed off the 737 line for good. Think another revision after the MAX is ever going to be approved?
- rsynnott 7y agoI think a more modest re-engine of the 737 would absolutely be approved. They’d have to sell it at a discount vs the a32x, obviously.
- cameldrv 7y agoI think that the MAX was about as modest as they could make it. That was really the point of the whole exercise. A more modern engine core with a smaller fan wouldn't have moved the fuel economy needle enough to justify a new model I don't think, and Boeing would have lost a lot of orders to the A320neo. Everything would have been fine except there was so much pressure to make every change as modest as possible that it didn't quite all work. They needed to either make significant changes to the landing gear or significant changes to the flight control computer and they chose neither.
- joking 7y agothe a400m plane has been a brand failure, it's military and on a different league than civilian planes however.
- throw0101a 7y agoAnd how has the KC-46 done compared to the A330 MRTT?
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoPer a quick check of Wikipedia it seems like they're about equal. The KC46 is being fielded by the US and a few nations that the US traditionally use the same arms. The A330 is fielded by the UK, a couple commonwealth nations and KSA Total number built is in the 30s for both.
- throw0101a 7y agoThe MRTT is being used in the field. The KC-46 not so much: * https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29933/air-force-says-it-will-be-years-before-boeings-faulty-new-tankers-are-fully-operational https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29933/air-force-says-i... * https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.charpentreau/24184-no-fix-before-months-for-kc-46-pegasus-cargo-issue https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.charpentreau/24184-no-fix-...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago>Boeing can't even keep its newest plane in the skies The 787 is the newest airframe and it's fine. The 737 is the Windows XP of the sky and there's only so much you can fix with service packs.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoThe 787 is the newest airframe and it's fine. The 737 is the Windows XP of the sky and there's only so much you can fix with service packs. How about the KC-46 and 777X?
- snickerbockers 7y ago787 doesn't fill the same role as 737 and A320, it's a much larger plane that carries more passengers. 737 and A320 seem to be much more popular for domestic flights within the US than larger planes.
- philjohn 7y agoAnd the economics of a small single-aisle plane for medium haul, e.g. the East Coast, seems to be what is pushing the needle.
- rsynnott 7y agoThey need a replacement for it, then, tho. The 737/a32x size is hugely important. Nearly all the planes I’m on are one or the other.
- yardie 7y agoThe 737 needs to go away. It's a great plane from a different era (staircases instead of jetways). That era has long passed. They've been trying to shoehorn it in. Rather than scale up the 737 cockpit flight controls they could have scaled down the 777 cockpit. Or even developed an all new one license cockpit in the same vein as the A320 series.
- usr1106 7y agoOne of the bigger 737 operators is Ryanair. They mostly fly to small airports, so it's staircases not jetways. Their product and their brand are worse than bad, but they make a lot of money. Yes, I agree the 50 year old design seems to have reached its end of life.
- philjohn 7y agoAs well as being great to fly in (seriously, business class on the upper deck by the window is an absolute dream) they have that "WOW" factor that I haven't experienced since first seeing a 747 or Concorde.
- PedroBatista 7y agoThe A380 was a bet that didn't payoff, it's a bit different than Boeing's complete rotten culture of the past 20/30 years.
- alexis_fr 7y agoAirbus scandal won’t come “in a month”: Boeing’s problems became public in 2013 and it is the same problem over and over. - The Ducommon airframes in 2013, problem is FAA delegated certification to Boeing, - The batteries, albeit smaller, - The MAX, 2 crashes due to oversight and to the FAA delegating certification to Boeing. Boeing’s problem didn’t come in a day, but in 20 years since the merge with MD, who had the same lose and fast culture. Airbus is safe for the time being, even if risks always exist, political instability for example. Not the case for the moment.
- ahartmetz 7y agoWell, for Airbus there is this where it looks like problems were swept under the rug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296 ... though from the same era, there is this for Boeing which seems much worse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues
- pdonis 7y ago> for Airbus there is this where it looks like problems were swept under the rug Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 This is the same basic design flaw that Boeing's MCAS has (allowing a single AoA sensor failure to cause the airplane to do unexpected and dangerous things), but unlike MCAS, it wasn't an ad hoc addition to deal with an issue in a redesign of an old airplane, it was designed into all Airbus fly-by-wire aircraft from the start.
- slavak 7y agoYou keep posting this, but it's simply not true- Qantas flight 72 did not experience an AoA sensor failure, and even if it had, the A330 uses all 3 independent AoA sensors and all 3 independent air data inertial reference units to command control movements. The issue was caused by one of the ADIRU CPUs corrupting valid sensor data to produce a series of very specific spikes, hitting a specific edge case in the AoA cross-check logic that made the flight computer behave as if the erroneous data it was seeing was valid. It's undoubtedly a serious design flaw, but it's not even remotely in the same ballpark as the Max's flagrant disregard for all process and well known design standards. http://code7700.com/accident_qantas_72.htm http://code7700.com/accident_qantas_72.htm
- socialdemocrat 7y agoBecause Europe has not legalized corruption to the same degree as the US. Massive campaign contributions is not as common in Europe, hence large European multi-nationals likely don't have the same opportunity to change regulations to serve them. Of course they can still influence politicians by talking about all the jobs they will provide etc. Also power in Europe is not centralized the same way as it is in the US. In the US you can lobby Washington DC. American lobbyist companies started swarming Brüssels as soon as the EU started gaining more power over national legislation. So there is potential for the EU to head in the US direction, but it isn't quite there yet.
- isostatic 7y ago> Massive campaign contributions is not as common in Europe Also far more complex - the political groupings in europe (EPP, ALDE, etc) are far looser organizations than the US parties, and power is spread in lots of different levels. Most Euro countries are coalitions of smaller parties too, defence in depth. The US and UK suffer from having just two parties that from time to time get all the power. Infiltrate one party and your time will come. Infiltrate both and you're safe.
- hnarn 7y ago> Brüssels Please stop that. Brussels is the English name for the city and clearly that letter does not exist in English. Alternatives are "Brussel" (Dutch) and "Bruxelles" (French). The closest to what you wrote is the German "Brüssel" (no S).
- tomp 7y agoAirbus isn't focused on profit (cutting corners), it's focused on politics (i.e. providing jobs in different countries). Hopefully that would make (local) engineers more powerful...
- bluedino 7y agoAerospace has the same level of politics when it comes to jobs in the USA.
- ailideex 7y ago> Airbus isn't focused on profit Why would you say that? > profit (cutting corners) Is profit the same as cutting corners?
- bhtru 7y agoThe context of the reply is why Airbus would not encounter the same organizational faults as Boeing. The general consensus is that Boeing pursued profit over safety with respect to the MAX. & they did so by cutting corners.
- ailideex 7y agoI think it is fair to say that Boeing cut some corners which resulted in the current situation - but even Airbus surely only prioritises safety over profit to a point - and I'm also sure Airbus cuts some corners. And this is also not really clarifying why Airbus, a publicly listed company with shareholders, is not focused on profits. I think what is being missed here is nuance - I don't think air-travel with 0 risk is possible - most things come with risk and if we are not willing to consider anything else nothing will ever get done.
- ailideex 7y agoYou really think Airbus will never prioritise profit over increasing safety? And if so do you think that Airbus planes are 100% safe?
- formercoder 7y ago
- larksimian 7y agoMy suspicion: the whole world lets the FAA validate airplanes and then sort of rubber stamps. Boeing was able to capture the FAA, but Airbus wasn't(since it's a foreign company). As such Airbus is still working with a proper adversarial regulator, whereas Boeing can get away with more cut corners. Eventually that screwed them. The EUs move for greater local safety review, ironically, might make Airbus less safe, since they might be able to capture the EU regulators. [edit] to emphasize: it's not market competition or the EU being better than the USA that's different. It's just the quasi-monopoly the FAA has on global aviation safety checks and the effect it has on foreign versus local companies. In fairness, if there were multiple US aircraft manufacturers, they might battle each other for FAA regulatory capture and prevent either of them from achieving it. [double edit] For the reverse of this see Dieselgate: discovered by some random American(named of all things John German) and pushed into the limelight by the EPA or whatever. It's not a perfect metaphor since he worked for an NGO, but arguably even civil society faces a sort of funder capture. Would German environmental NGOs have blown the whistle on something like this? Maybe?
- gamblor956 7y agoLet's not forget that until the two MAX crashes, Boeing had an overall safer record for its 7x7 line than Airbus did with its equivalent passenger jets. So the EU's "vaunted" adversarial regulator actually was doing a much worse job than the FAA.
- matthewmacleod 7y agoI think you have both misunderstood the argument being made, and misrepresented the relative safety of Airbus and Boeing passenger jets – which, by my understanding, is broadly comparable.
- larksimian 7y agoMy point was that the adversarial regulator for Airbus is the American FAA, not whatever EU institution is their equivalent.
- pdonis 7y ago
- atoav 7y agoAs somebody who lives close to the Hamburg Airbus Factory and read a lot about the Boeing story: the regulators are more strict within the EU, and my feeling is the biggest mistake in the whole Boeing saga was to have them regulate themselves. While there might be a economic benefit to not having to go the extra mile to get a regulators aproval, this can bite you really badly if you cannot uphold quality yourself any longer. And the interviews I heard wirh Boeing personel is nothing I ever heard even in personal exchanges with Airbus people. They surely also have their issues, bur to me it feels like a few magnitudes difference in severity. So in short: underfunding the FAA isn’t doing you airplane manufacturers a favour in the long term. I know in the US people are usually anxious to give any job to the state, but regulating is actually one of the things they should do, and should do well