5 ms·
Seeing as its a duopoly, i don't understand why boeing are unsafe sitting back, smugly safe in their mediocrity.
by FridayoLeary 5y ago
Seeing as its a duopoly, i don't understand why boeing are unsafe sitting back, smugly safe in their mediocrity.
- MattGaiser 5y agoEven a duopoly can turn lopsided if one sucks more than the other.
- mikro2nd 5y agoPerhaps because it's in the process of becoming a triopoly as Chinese investment in airliner production ramps up?
- selectodude 5y agoChina is still 25 years behind on jet engine development.
- estaseuropano 5y agoIsnt Boeing too behind on engine development and just buys them from RR?
- SonicScrub 5y agoNot just Boeing, every aircraft manufacture does this. Many aircraft clean-sheet designs are done as a technology partnership with a major engine manufacture such as Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, or General Electric. And that's pretty much how it's always been done. It's as ludicrous to say "Boeing is behind on engine technology" as it would be to say Ford is behind on their silicon chip manufacturing.
- coredog64 5y agoThe 777 was enabled by the new, super high powered GE-90s. The size of those engines needed to be taken into account at the initial design. Or, to kick HN's favorite Boeing whipping boy, the 737 MAX can't have new engines, only improved SNECMA ones, because the knock-on effects of changing the nacelle size/location would be such that you might as well design a new airplane.
- jaywalk 5y agoNobody builds their own engines. Boeing and Airbus will sometimes certify two different engines, giving customers the option. I don't believe any current Boeing jets use Rolls Royce engines though. Just CFM and Pratt & Whitney.
- globular-toast 5y agoBoeing doesn't make jet engines.
- jasode 5y ago>China is still 25 years behind on jet engine development. I don't understand how that comment fits Comac development. See their current aircraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac#Aircraft_in_production_or_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac#Aircraft_in_production_o... Their 2 planes in production use GE/CFM engines and the 1 in design is expected to use Rolls-Royce or GE.
- latch 5y agoConfused. If they're relying on engines from America/Europe/Russia, doesn't that meant that they are, in fact, behind?
- gimmeThaBeet 5y agoPerhaps that's true, but it's sort of orthogonal. boeing and airbus don't make engines either; afaik no major aircraft manufacturer does (pending the inevitable exception). Granted, I don't understand how China's aerospace industry works, if it's basically just a large industry-wide state conglomerate. But not having locally sourced engines does not really give any information about comac's potential competitiveness.
- mikro2nd 5y agoI've always understood that airframe/airliner construction is quite orthogonal to engine choice. (I am very far from knowledgable on the subject!) A given airframe will, afaik, be available with choices of different engines from different manufacturers at the customer's choice.
- coredog64 5y agoKinda. US law requires the airframe to be sold separate from the engines. But each engine fitted to the airframe has to be done in a unique way as they have different operating characteristics. Even if you enforce consistent hard points, it's not as trivial as unbolting one and putting another one on there. For example, the 767 had RR, GE, and P&W engine choices. But almost nobody bought the RR option, which turned all the NRE that Boeing and Honeywell did into a sunk cost. On the flip side, the stable mate 757 was almost exclusively RR engines. If this is going to happen, then what I would expect to see is that COMAC will launch with engines from a western manufacturer and then maybe sell a refit kit (or just do the refit work themselves) later.
- FridayoLeary 5y agoBe real. They have no qualms about stealing other countries industrial secrets. They are very effective at it too. Their latest fighter jet (j-20) looks like a photocopy of the F-35.
- rapsey 5y agoHow many western passengers want to fly in a Chinese plane?
- typon 5y agoHow many people in the West are not jingoistic morons who tie their identity to their country?
- rcpt 5y agoI don't think I've ever decided on a ticket based on the airplane type. At some point Norwegian had 787s from Oslo to Boston and I recall liking those but I'm 90% sure that it didn't affect my purchase.
- ethagknight 5y agoBecause when COMAC shows up to eat Boeing’s Ultra Low Cost Carrier lunch, the duoply could suddenly be just Airbus and Comac with Boeing struggling to stay relevant
- FridayoLeary 5y agoEh. I won't fly on a COMAC DreamAir CloudFly 600 or whatever it is that they will call it. Also the US government won't let Boeing collapse, for one, who will make their military planes?
- CydeWeys 5y agoThe article says that their share of the single-aisle plane market has fallen from 50% to 35%, and could fall farther still (with Airbus continuing to eat their lunch) as the A321neo continues cannibalizing Boeing's market share. So clearly Boeing cannot safely sit back and do nothing. They risk ceding this single-aisle duopoly to Airbus entirely, turning it into a monopoly.
- simion314 5y agoAsk Intel.
- notahacker 5y agoIt hasn't sat back in relation to Airbus in the narrowbody market It designed the airliner the market wanted in the form of the MAX; it's just that a disastrous design flaw resulted in crashes and resulting groundings and losses of new aircraft orders. Airbus adopted exactly the same conservative strategy of incrementally updating a familiar design for exactly the same solid commercial reasons, but their aircraft didn't crash.
- cstross 5y agoThe key difference is that the A320 dated to the 1980s and was designed from the get-go for fly-by-wire and high-bypass turbofans. The 737 was in many respects an evolution of the 1950s-vintage Boeing 707, and was designed for low-bypass jets and to operate from rough fields using built-in steps or short airstairs rather than a modern terminal with jetway/piers. So the 73 family has a much shorter undercarriage, which affects the engine diameter, and so on. What they need is a new narrowbody that is to the 787 as the 757 was to the 767: narrow and lower capacity but same cockpit/control layout and handling characteristics (to make fleet crew management cheaper), and capacity overlapping at the high end with the bottom end of the widebody 787. But developing an all-new narrowbody costs tens of billions, while incrementally extending the 737 to the MAX was cheaper ...
- notahacker 5y agoAgreed, but the differences between the 737 undercarriage and A320 undercarriage is a quirk of Airbus not being around to launch its first gen narrowbody in the tiny turbojet era of the 1960s, not a reflection of Airbus doing anything particularly innovative in that market since fly-by-wire when it first rolled out. The market for 767 replacements had different demand characteristics (they didn't have many customers with all-767 fleets asking for a new jet with the same type rating), and the launch of the 787 was badly delayed by the new technologies, which are major factors other than program cost why they went for another 737 generation rather than a clean sheet.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- michael1999 5y agoTheir engineering culture has suffered a shock. From the outside, it looks like it was deliberately undermined by management and the move to the South chasing right-to-work leverage. If they don't design anything new for 15 years, and early-retire their workforce, they might lose the capacity to design anything substantial at all.