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If Boom is able to come out with a new supersonic aircraft, is it possible for a startup to compete with Boeing or Airbus in subsonic aircraft? Either coming up

If Boom is able to come out with a new supersonic aircraft, is it possible for a startup to compete with Boeing or Airbus in subsonic aircraft? Either coming up with a new design or another innovation that can compete. Or, are those companies pretty much set with impassable moats?

hef19898 4y ago
Unless Boeing or Airbus screw up financially, which is almost impossible, the duopoly is set in stone. It will take massive government backing to change that, Airbus itself is proof of that. The only parties that do challenge the big two on single aile jets are Bombardier and Embraer, one of which was bought by Airbus and one which was almost bought by Boeing.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Right. At this point a new aircraft program is easily $15B+ of development. That kind of money is hard to come by for a new aviation company. China, Russia, and Japan have all tried breaking into the market as well without much success.
  - sonthonax 4y ago
    Why aren't the Chinese and Russians successful at building airliners? International politics aside, they have workable products, so why can't they break into the duopoly.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Workable != competitive, and in an industry as cutthroat in aviation airlines want the absolute best in fuel efficiency and reliability to undercut their competitors by $5. There are other commercial aircraft manufacturers but essentially in each size segment you will only see two players. Embraer doesn‘t make any direct competitors with Airbus or Boeing, as an example.
      - hef19898 4y ago
        Embraer jets got rebranded as A220s not that long ago, great planes that took over the market that served by short 737s and A319/18s. No competition for the bigger planes, that is true.
        bobthepanda 4y ago
        The A220s were Bombardier. Them selling out to Airbus had more to do with general issues at the parent conglomerate (they also exited trains and snowmobiles to raise cash). But they still make corporate jets.
        hef19898 4y ago
        Ha, I always mix up Bombardier, Embraer, Boeing and Airbus when it comes to whom bought whom. And yes, Bombardier always made great aircraft. Embraer as well, by the way.
    - octodog 4y ago
      Duopoly markets can be surprisingly efficient in some circumstances, so it may not be profitable for other firms to enter the market. https://inomics.com/terms/bertrand-competition-1504578 https://inomics.com/terms/bertrand-competition-1504578
    - everybodyknows 4y ago
      > they have workable products Not so, not for Russia anyway: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100
      - hef19898 4y ago
        And that was a very promising program.
    - jseliger 4y ago
      There is an excellent book on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/China-Airborne-James-Fallows/dp/1400031273 https://www.amazon.com/China-Airborne-James-Fallows/dp/14000...
- panick21_ 4y ago
  I disagree. The disruption can happen as many routes transition to electric. Boeing and Airbus might wait for to long. There are already new companies doing short-distance electric passenger flight. These companies could well scale to longer distance flights. You could also imagine a company like Tesla getting in that business as well.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    There are no electric jet operated commercially, and wont be until at least 2026. And those that are in development are meant for distances around 100-200 km or strait up urban mobility. The latter of which falls squarely into the helicopter segment. And as far as automotive, or generally non-aerospace, companies are concerned, well, aerospace is hard. Really hard, it is with the potential exception of life science the most regulated industry on earth. None of the automotive experience (close to none, but you get the point) translate into an aerospace environment. And even if, we are still looking at billions of development cost for small aircraft to be used commercialy, in the range of ten billion plus for commercial airliners.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      > There are no electric jet operated commercially, and wont be until at least 2026. Yeah, I wasn't making any time prediction, but big technology changes can break established industry patterns. > The latter of which falls squarely into the helicopter segment. There are lots of markets in the past that flew these kind of routes and with electric other can again and more routes can be added because of the changed economics. Helicopters are unsafe and have low capacity, I don't really think they are actually competing in the same space. They address something different then something like the Heart Aerospace ES-19. That plane is 400km, 19 seater designed to launch in 2026. And that is with incredibly conservative choices, conservative air-frame, conservative batteries and so on. There is a huge amount of potential for increasing the range left once you fully optimize every aspect of the plane around electric. > And as far as automotive, or generally non-aerospace, companies are concerned, well, aerospace is hard. I picked Tesla for a reason. Tesla works with SpaceX. Those two companies already work together on many fronts. Tesla battery packs and electric motors in SpaceX vehicles. They have shared research divisions in material science and likely other things. Musk has been talking about electric plans for decades, its pretty clear that he wants to develop them and has mentioned before that between Tesla and SpaceX he has the ingredients. Its just that there is so much more scaling to do in automotive and trucking that it doesn't yet make sense to invest the resources. Lets just be real, Tesla knows much more about electric motors and batteries then companies like Heart Aerospace, or existing companies like Boeing/Airbus. Yes the industry is regulated more and certifications are more strict, but a company that produces 3+ million electric motors a year (more large electric motors then anybody else in the world) fully vertically integrated, can manage to match companies like Heart or Airbus when developing battery packs and electric motors and get them certified and produced. SpaceX speaks for itself, they outperform Boeing to an almost embracing degree in space, see Crew Dragon compared to Starliner. I am confident that if they were to work on an airplane they could do it. They had to do a huge amount of certification work for DoD, for NASA, they know how to work with regulators and the get hardware certified. Now of course, it would not be easy and success in aerospace is never guaranteed. But the ingredients are there and the is little question they could raise the required funding. I think that would be a better thing to focus on then robots to be honest.
Ekaros 4y ago
I think there is some questions of them being able to scale up the production. But Boeing and Airbus aren't invisible if you are offering a product they don't sell. See A220 with somewhere 220+ units sold. It did end up in hands of Airbus, but it was effort by Bombardier.
upupandup 4y ago
No. There is no way they can compete with say Airbus's quality and build quality. If they think people are gonna trust their lives to a startup company kept afloat by current interest rates over Airbus, I got a bridge to sell you. If supersonic travel was in demand post-pandemic and rising inflation, interest rates, Airbus would've been all over it.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Eh, the aircraft manufacturers fuck up market projection too. Boeing has almost entirely ceded replacement of its own 757 and 767 to Airbus since it offers nothing in that midsize range today. Airbus fucked up thinking that the A380 was going to make money, and it took them a while to get the A350 right despite pressure from airlines to actually compete with the B787.

hef19898 4y ago

Unless Boeing or Airbus screw up financially, which is almost impossible, the duopoly is set in stone. It will take massive government backing to change that, Airbus itself is proof of that. The only parties that do challenge the big two on single aile jets are Bombardier and Embraer, one of which was bought by Airbus and one which was almost bought by Boeing.

bobthepanda 4y ago
Right. At this point a new aircraft program is easily $15B+ of development. That kind of money is hard to come by for a new aviation company. China, Russia, and Japan have all tried breaking into the market as well without much success.
- sonthonax 4y ago
  Why aren't the Chinese and Russians successful at building airliners? International politics aside, they have workable products, so why can't they break into the duopoly.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Workable != competitive, and in an industry as cutthroat in aviation airlines want the absolute best in fuel efficiency and reliability to undercut their competitors by $5. There are other commercial aircraft manufacturers but essentially in each size segment you will only see two players. Embraer doesn‘t make any direct competitors with Airbus or Boeing, as an example.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Embraer jets got rebranded as A220s not that long ago, great planes that took over the market that served by short 737s and A319/18s. No competition for the bigger planes, that is true.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        The A220s were Bombardier. Them selling out to Airbus had more to do with general issues at the parent conglomerate (they also exited trains and snowmobiles to raise cash). But they still make corporate jets.
        hef19898 4y ago
        Ha, I always mix up Bombardier, Embraer, Boeing and Airbus when it comes to whom bought whom. And yes, Bombardier always made great aircraft. Embraer as well, by the way.
  - octodog 4y ago
    Duopoly markets can be surprisingly efficient in some circumstances, so it may not be profitable for other firms to enter the market. https://inomics.com/terms/bertrand-competition-1504578 https://inomics.com/terms/bertrand-competition-1504578
  - everybodyknows 4y ago
    > they have workable products Not so, not for Russia anyway: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Superjet_100
    - hef19898 4y ago
      And that was a very promising program.
  - jseliger 4y ago
    There is an excellent book on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/China-Airborne-James-Fallows/dp/1400031273 https://www.amazon.com/China-Airborne-James-Fallows/dp/14000...
panick21_ 4y ago
I disagree. The disruption can happen as many routes transition to electric. Boeing and Airbus might wait for to long. There are already new companies doing short-distance electric passenger flight. These companies could well scale to longer distance flights. You could also imagine a company like Tesla getting in that business as well.
- hef19898 4y ago
  There are no electric jet operated commercially, and wont be until at least 2026. And those that are in development are meant for distances around 100-200 km or strait up urban mobility. The latter of which falls squarely into the helicopter segment. And as far as automotive, or generally non-aerospace, companies are concerned, well, aerospace is hard. Really hard, it is with the potential exception of life science the most regulated industry on earth. None of the automotive experience (close to none, but you get the point) translate into an aerospace environment. And even if, we are still looking at billions of development cost for small aircraft to be used commercialy, in the range of ten billion plus for commercial airliners.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    > There are no electric jet operated commercially, and wont be until at least 2026. Yeah, I wasn't making any time prediction, but big technology changes can break established industry patterns. > The latter of which falls squarely into the helicopter segment. There are lots of markets in the past that flew these kind of routes and with electric other can again and more routes can be added because of the changed economics. Helicopters are unsafe and have low capacity, I don't really think they are actually competing in the same space. They address something different then something like the Heart Aerospace ES-19. That plane is 400km, 19 seater designed to launch in 2026. And that is with incredibly conservative choices, conservative air-frame, conservative batteries and so on. There is a huge amount of potential for increasing the range left once you fully optimize every aspect of the plane around electric. > And as far as automotive, or generally non-aerospace, companies are concerned, well, aerospace is hard. I picked Tesla for a reason. Tesla works with SpaceX. Those two companies already work together on many fronts. Tesla battery packs and electric motors in SpaceX vehicles. They have shared research divisions in material science and likely other things. Musk has been talking about electric plans for decades, its pretty clear that he wants to develop them and has mentioned before that between Tesla and SpaceX he has the ingredients. Its just that there is so much more scaling to do in automotive and trucking that it doesn't yet make sense to invest the resources. Lets just be real, Tesla knows much more about electric motors and batteries then companies like Heart Aerospace, or existing companies like Boeing/Airbus. Yes the industry is regulated more and certifications are more strict, but a company that produces 3+ million electric motors a year (more large electric motors then anybody else in the world) fully vertically integrated, can manage to match companies like Heart or Airbus when developing battery packs and electric motors and get them certified and produced. SpaceX speaks for itself, they outperform Boeing to an almost embracing degree in space, see Crew Dragon compared to Starliner. I am confident that if they were to work on an airplane they could do it. They had to do a huge amount of certification work for DoD, for NASA, they know how to work with regulators and the get hardware certified. Now of course, it would not be easy and success in aerospace is never guaranteed. But the ingredients are there and the is little question they could raise the required funding. I think that would be a better thing to focus on then robots to be honest.

Ekaros 4y ago

I think there is some questions of them being able to scale up the production. But Boeing and Airbus aren't invisible if you are offering a product they don't sell. See A220 with somewhere 220+ units sold. It did end up in hands of Airbus, but it was effort by Bombardier.

upupandup 4y ago

No. There is no way they can compete with say Airbus's quality and build quality. If they think people are gonna trust their lives to a startup company kept afloat by current interest rates over Airbus, I got a bridge to sell you. If supersonic travel was in demand post-pandemic and rising inflation, interest rates, Airbus would've been all over it.

bobthepanda 4y ago
Eh, the aircraft manufacturers fuck up market projection too. Boeing has almost entirely ceded replacement of its own 757 and 767 to Airbus since it offers nothing in that midsize range today. Airbus fucked up thinking that the A380 was going to make money, and it took them a while to get the A350 right despite pressure from airlines to actually compete with the B787.