4 ms·

Boeing won't have failed until someone starts a competing company that stands a chance of replacing it. (Airbus is the same thing, very corporate, very closely

Boeing won't have failed until someone starts a competing company that stands a chance of replacing it. (Airbus is the same thing, very corporate, very closely tied to governments, but in Europe).

imglorp 5y ago
There's a raft of product failures across the board. Not making saleable product is kind of a problem. Boeing's been working on Starliner since 2010 and it has yet to carry anyone to the ISS. Then there's MAX. And the SLS (which hasn't failed yet but /will/ be a 4 billion disposable program, at best.) Maybe true, it's business profitable, successfully extracting money from airlines and government contracts.
mywittyname 5y ago
In the past 15 years, it's been demonstrated that startups can successfully build cars at scale and commercial rocket ships. No company is safe. Boeing is exactly the type of company that won't know they're dying until they are dead.
- echelon 5y ago
  > No company is safe. Boeing is exactly the type of company that won't know they're dying until they are dead. Yes, but they're in a sufficiently protected region of state space guarded by landscape difficulty, moats, massive contracts and cash flows, the government, you name it. You can't just build a better plane from zero and immediately start taking orders. You have to start with something small, tangential, and then grow into that market. That's still very hard to do in aerospace because the requirement is "don't kill people" yet the problem involves putting people in mortal danger. I don't doubt that it could happen, but I think it's a very tall order.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    A certain car and spaceship building entrepreneur I could see taking a pretty big chunk of Boeings pie if they wanted to expand or split off in that direction
miketery 5y ago
Bombardier had a superior product and had a massive sale to Delta lined up. Boeing came in with the government and added 300% tariff. Talk about "free market."
- speed_spread 5y ago
  Yeah, fuck the new Boeing. Now everytime I'm forced to sit in a 737 I try to fart as much as possible.
  - jonnycoder 5y ago
    thanks
speed_spread 5y ago
Because of regulatory capture, any competitor will have to be even _more_ subsidized than Boeing is. A few years ago, Bombardier introduced a new plane, the C-Series. Even though it did not immediately compete with Boeing's own offering, Boeing successfully lobbied for an extravagant 300% import tariffs to be be applied which killed the primary market (US) for it. Canadian government folded and essentially gave the otherwise technically successful project to Airbus in the hope of salvaging any industrial returns on eventual mass production. The airplane is now known as the A220. Any would-be competitor will not only be fighting Boeing, but the whole US government.
- acchow 5y ago
  > Boeing successfully lobbied for an extravagant 300% import tariffs to be be applied Doesn't this violate NAFTA?
  - speed_spread 5y ago
    Not just NAFTA. From Wikipedia: > On 10 January 2018, the Canadian government filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization against the US. > On 26 January 2018, the four USITC commissioners unanimously determined that US industry is not threatened and no duty orders will be issued, overturning the imposed duties. The Commission public report was made available by February 2018. On March 22, Boeing declined to appeal the ruling. While the USITC had determined there was no threat, the ruling came too late for Bombardier, as the dumping petition by Boeing had already paved the way for Bombardier to relinquish a controlling interest in the CSeries to Airbus in October 2017. This is just a repeat of the Avro Arrow story. US demanding free trade from everyone and then just bullying its weight around when someone comes along with a better deal than what they can manage.
    - doctor_eval 5y ago
      Free trade, free speech, free markets… but we’re free to change the rules when it suits us, too.

Boeing won't have failed until someone starts a competing company that stands a chance of replacing it. (Airbus is the same thing, very corporate, very closely tied to governments, but in Europe).

imglorp 5y ago

There's a raft of product failures across the board. Not making saleable product is kind of a problem. Boeing's been working on Starliner since 2010 and it has yet to carry anyone to the ISS. Then there's MAX. And the SLS (which hasn't failed yet but /will/ be a 4 billion disposable program, at best.) Maybe true, it's business profitable, successfully extracting money from airlines and government contracts.

mywittyname 5y ago

In the past 15 years, it's been demonstrated that startups can successfully build cars at scale and commercial rocket ships. No company is safe. Boeing is exactly the type of company that won't know they're dying until they are dead.

echelon 5y ago
> No company is safe. Boeing is exactly the type of company that won't know they're dying until they are dead. Yes, but they're in a sufficiently protected region of state space guarded by landscape difficulty, moats, massive contracts and cash flows, the government, you name it. You can't just build a better plane from zero and immediately start taking orders. You have to start with something small, tangential, and then grow into that market. That's still very hard to do in aerospace because the requirement is "don't kill people" yet the problem involves putting people in mortal danger. I don't doubt that it could happen, but I think it's a very tall order.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  A certain car and spaceship building entrepreneur I could see taking a pretty big chunk of Boeings pie if they wanted to expand or split off in that direction

miketery 5y ago

Bombardier had a superior product and had a massive sale to Delta lined up. Boeing came in with the government and added 300% tariff. Talk about "free market."

speed_spread 5y ago
Yeah, fuck the new Boeing. Now everytime I'm forced to sit in a 737 I try to fart as much as possible.
- jonnycoder 5y ago
  thanks

speed_spread 5y ago

Because of regulatory capture, any competitor will have to be even _more_ subsidized than Boeing is. A few years ago, Bombardier introduced a new plane, the C-Series. Even though it did not immediately compete with Boeing's own offering, Boeing successfully lobbied for an extravagant 300% import tariffs to be be applied which killed the primary market (US) for it. Canadian government folded and essentially gave the otherwise technically successful project to Airbus in the hope of salvaging any industrial returns on eventual mass production. The airplane is now known as the A220. Any would-be competitor will not only be fighting Boeing, but the whole US government.

acchow 5y ago
> Boeing successfully lobbied for an extravagant 300% import tariffs to be be applied Doesn't this violate NAFTA?
- speed_spread 5y ago
  Not just NAFTA. From Wikipedia: > On 10 January 2018, the Canadian government filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization against the US. > On 26 January 2018, the four USITC commissioners unanimously determined that US industry is not threatened and no duty orders will be issued, overturning the imposed duties. The Commission public report was made available by February 2018. On March 22, Boeing declined to appeal the ruling. While the USITC had determined there was no threat, the ruling came too late for Bombardier, as the dumping petition by Boeing had already paved the way for Bombardier to relinquish a controlling interest in the CSeries to Airbus in October 2017. This is just a repeat of the Avro Arrow story. US demanding free trade from everyone and then just bullying its weight around when someone comes along with a better deal than what they can manage.
  - doctor_eval 5y ago
    Free trade, free speech, free markets… but we’re free to change the rules when it suits us, too.