Politics and the Airbus

[kwijybo]

You are kidding, right

This has got to be a joke right? Buy Boeing over Airbus because of current events. Puuhlease. If you can drop the flag and turn down the music, you need to look at more than the 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' current take on world events. I hate to break this to you, but there are somethings that America is not the best at. Cars and our public education system come to mind.

What is the answer? To just say, we don't care, we are going with the US product all the way, price and quality be darned. Hardly the American way. How about challenging Ford (or Boeing) to come up with a superior product at a fair price. Americans are pretty resourceful when we want to be. I much rather that route be taken than the, 'we don't like you and are taking our ball home' route. Heck, there is a reason not to use anything. My wife won't eat California grapes because the pesticides used in them cause a high rate of cancer amongst the pickers. You thought you had it rough- she went to Berkeley and worked for Clinton.....

dgs, you are right on the money.

As for the EU and seeing us weaker, of course. For a while now, those countries have been relegated to third row note takers at NATO exercises. They made decisions to Socialize their countries and forgo there military. Look to the north for that as well. Why do you think they banded together in the first place? This is a pilot board, not a political board so I won't digress. I was a poli-sci major. Two golden rules- all politics are local, and follow the money. I am sure if you look into those two statements, you will find some answers as to why France doesn't want to join in our post war parade in a couple of weeks.

It's all good.

 

[rightrudder]

Airbus has developed it's market share and is expanding it through undercutting the pricing of Boeing. How do they do that? The Goverments of the consortium countries have directly subsidized the Airbus Industries to allow them to win contracts.

 

[dgs]

payback

rightrudder -- If that's true, then we are buying airplanes subsidised by European taxpayers. Maybe it's a little payback for all the tax dollars we sent their way after WW II.

If the competition entices Boeing to build a better product at a better price, then that would be a good thing. Nothing Boeing makes now (with the possible exception of the 777) can come close to matching the technology in the A320, much less the newer Airbusses.

FR8mastr -- BIG difference between an A300 and an A320. Once airborne, I should never have to touch the rudder unless I've lost an engine or both Flight Augmentation Computers (FACs). Airbus is kind enough to provide three (count 'em 3) other places to put my feet besides the rudder pedals!

 

[typhoonpilot]

An interesting thread. First of all, bigred, that is a hilarious look at the French military. I do believe they had a victory at Hastings in 1066 though.

I like the Boeing philosophy more than the Airbus philosophy and would like to stay on a Boeing for the rest of my career. The 777 is an awesome piece of technology and with the electronic checklist I believe it is superior to any Airbus in production. That plus the ability the pilot has to override the protective logic if necessary makes it a more acceptable fly-by-wire design. That said, Boeing the corporation has been resting on it's laurels for too long and is letting Airbus surpass it in both design and market share.

Once upon a time Boeing was willing to bet the company on a new design, i.e. the 747. Even the 757/767 was a pretty daring idea in the 1970s. In the last few years it seems they have picked up the McDonnell Douglas management ability to spend billions of dollars on ideas that have no practical concept, i.e. Sonic Cruiser.

I left a good job at Boeing because I was working in Long Beach and could see the idiotic decisions taking place first hand. The MD-11 had a lot of production potential as a cargo aircraft and airlines like Lufthansa had to threaten to never buy a Boeing again unless they produced their option aircraft. Boeing and their leader Phil Condit are making some really dumb decisions. What is this idea of moving the HQ to Chicago to be closer to the customer all about ? Closer to what customer ? United and American are already solidly in the Boeing line. I've seen stupid decisions like this throughouot my career. They are made by men who just want to look like they are doing something in the absence of any bright ideas for the future of their company.

Boeing needs to get on the ball and produce airplanes that companies are willing to buy at an affordable price. The new high efficiency aircraft might work, but it needs to be a little bigger. Unfortunately Boeing is located in the United states and they are too close to the moronic RJ philosophy users. My present company thinks the A-330 is too small and they can't wait for the A-380 because they need the capacity. That is true for most of the International Airlines in Europe and Asia. Even the useless MBAs running U.S. airlines will realize bigger airplanes for Trans Atlantic and Trans Pacific routes will be the wave of the future. Unfortunately Boeing is 5 years behind Airbus in that contest and will lose the entire market for that category of aircraft by trying to market a slightly bigger 747.

Typhoonpilot

 

[Buckeye]

I can't remember the last time I saw a well aged AB still flying around, but I do seem to recall seeing old Boeing's still flying and still generating revenue. I know of very few all AB airlines. I know of many all Boeing airlines, infact I know of many Boeing airlines that have augmented themselves with some AB. I don't know of any AB airlines that have augmented themselves with Boeings.

 

[dgs]

typhoonpilot -- Good post. I couldn't agree with you more on several issues, particularly that Boeing is resting on its laurels. I flew a Boeing product for over 14 years and didn't think I would like the Airbus. The whole fly-by-wire thing scared me after being a fly-by-cable kind of guy. However, once I learned how it was designed, I quickly learned to love it. I really think Boeing needs to apply some of the 777 technology to smaller and mid-sized airplanes to catch the new sales and increase market share. Unfortunately, I doubt that will happen any time soon.

jetBlue had planned to go with 737s, but a competitive examination of the A320 and the 737, and an arrogant attitude from Boeing about their product and its price, led us to go with the A320. I'm sure there would have been some advantages in going with a US company instead of going to France to pickup our aircraft, but the leadership of our company made a great business decision based on the available products.

Buckeye -- Your argument is specious. (I learned that word from Eagleflip.) First, consider how long Boeing has been manufacturing airplanes vs. when Airbus was first created. Second, I assume you live in the US, not Europe. If you want to see older AB aircraft, go to Europe--the first airplanes were sold there, not to US companies (as you might expect). Additionally, I think you'll find lots of all AB companies there!

 

[hogdriver00]

Defend paris

Bigred.

How many French army soldiers does it take to defend Paris?

Nobody knows, they've never tried.

Hog

 

[Hugh Jorgan]

N1atEcon,

If it makes you feel better, I promise to buy a boeing if I am ever in the market for a large passenger jet. Anyone here have one on their shopping list?

 

[GVFlyer]

Airbus



I have always resented Airbus dumping their product on our shores. Airbus was one of the companies we studied in my graduate program. The company is a subsidized extension of the European social welfare system. In order to insure full employment, they manufacture aircraft when they have no orders. I've seen as many as 19 white tails (unsold aircraft) at Hamburg. No for profit manufacturer could afford to do that. That's the principle difference between Boeing and Airbus - Boeing must show a profit to stay in business, Airbus does not. The Airbus business model is to sell aircraft at near cost of production then arrange purchase or lease financing through a European consortium at generally 2 - 3.5%.

When I lived in Europe, President Reagan came to France to speak with Francoise Mitterrand, then head of the French state, in an attempt to limit Airbus dumping in the US. It was to no avail. Unfortunately, the US cannot apply restrictive tarriffs to foreign manufactured aircraft because of retaliatory actions against our domestic aircraft manufacturers.

It is difficult to blame the airlines, who are operating on a shoestring, when they avail themselves of the best deal possible in the market place and are simply trying to insure their economic survival.

GV

 

[race#53]

Sorry for the non-interview nature of this but it does have an affect on hiring and the airlines;
I am basically a conservative hawk with modest military service years ago under my belt. But this question, "Why attack Iraq now?", has been bothering me recently. It seems to go against the grain for us to be in a "first strike" role against a tin-horn dictator like Saddam Hussein. For possible clarification, I posed this question to a friend of mine from church who is a retired USN Admiral and currently a well connected Defense Industry executive. I've also known him for 15 years and know him to be a smart, level-headed person, and church leader. Here are his thoughts, but in my words:

Al Qaeda, Hamas and associated terrorists of the world are out to get the US in a big way. They proved with the Sept 11 attack that they are capable of a major strike. This just whetted their appetite for an escalation to the next level. There is a strong likelihood that the next level will not be a similar attack that takes out 2,800 people, but leaves no long-lasting damage. They will take their time, and likely go for a strike that will try to take out a major US city. It could be a dirty bomb, with combination radiation and/or biological agents, exploded near a major city, such as from a container ship in the Hudson River, or San Francisco or Baltimore harbors. It would not even have to be unloaded, and we don't have the technology to detect it in advance. And they are likely to have several such strikes in the works, in case one or two are discovered. We are talking about a "first strike" by them that will, for all practical purposes, seem like a last strike to us. It will do so much damage to our economy, and several hundred thousand people, that the war is over as far as the terrorists are concerned, and they won. We will only be left to wonder who did it and who to bomb in retaliation.

So the notion that we are not a "first strike" country becomes a death sentence for us, if we allow this to happen first, before we take action.

The terrorists will have a very difficult time pulling this off without the help of a small industrial complex. The current providers of such a complex to the terrorists are Syria, Iran, North Korea and Iraq.

From among these, Iraq and North Korea have the least stable leadership, and Iraq is the one with the most proven attempts to develop weapons of the type that terrorists would like to have.

It is reasonable to think that our national leaders believe that we must prove to all these countries that we are not going to sit by waiting on Armageddon. We need to stop the terrorist supporters now, and we need to show the other terrorist supporters what is in store for them if we feel we need to hit them to protect our national interests.

Terrorists have no allegiance to a particular country, so they don't fear retaliation by the US. The old cold-war standoff is no longer operative. The terrorists probably consider a nuclear retaliation against one or more of these supporting countries just the cost of war. They, and their supporting countries, also know that the US will not just heave a few nukes onto a Baghdad in retaliation, killing a couple of million innocent civilians.

The terrorists are also not members of the UN. Our discussions there are just a comedy to the terrorists.

So the US must act now in every way possible to stop the possibility of such an attack against the US. Part of that action is to deny the terrorists the support of these rogue countries. If a rogue country's leadership is so unstable that they might sell/give the terrorists the weapons, then we must stop it now. Iraq is such a country. A measured, non-nuclear attack on Iraq may cause the others to cease their support of the terrorists in such a dangerous way. It also may cause the least civilian casualties of all the alternatives.

We must make it clear to the terror-supporting countries that there will be a price to pay, and that a nuclear retaliation, which we are unlikely to use, is not the only option open to us.

I think President Bush understands he cannot let a first strike happen, and that nuclear retaliation is no longer a threat. We must go after the terrorists, and their supporters and suppliers, now.

A history lesson....... Do you know why the US was in such a rush to develop the atomic bomb in WWII? It's not because we simply wanted such a weapon. It's because concerned physicists, including German refugee, Albert Einstein, warned Roosevelt in writing that the Germans had the most capable physicist in the field of nuclear physics, Nobel Prize winner, Werner Heisenberg, and he was known to have a laboratory working on such a device. We knew what would happen if he was the first to have such a weapon. Think about it.

I believe we are in a similar race today against the terrorists. The war has begun, so the "don't go to war" crowd apparently has a misunderstanding of what we are up against. We are at war today. Our country was similarly divided just before Pearl Harbor and our entry into WWII. A modern day "Pearl Harbor" is likely a surprise that is unacceptable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Corkill USN Retired USS Tunny SSG-282 ('60-'64)

 

[Skank]

OK, OK, I'm going to renew my subscription to Foreign Affairs so I can post on this message board again.

 

[SkyGirl]

I've never flown on an airline that flys the French Airbus and never will.




Buy American - Fly American!










.

 

[kwijybo]

I have a scarlet letter A that I am going to wear on my uniform from now on.

I hope that will appease the masses for the crimes against humanity I am guilty of.

 

[skybuda]

Yahoo search result for......."French wars won"

No results were found for your search: "French wars won".

Helpful Hints:

Check your spelling. Are all the words spelled correctly?
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Are you talking about the French, come on give us a break.



The only thing that eveyone can agree about on the airbus it that nice little tray sitting in front of ya. It can support a FA's ass really nice Guess that is why that nice little stick is there to, it can be used for alittle extra leverage.

SB

 

[FoxThree]

I have a scarlet letter A that I am going to wear on my uniform from now on.

I hope that will appease the masses for the crimes against humanity I am guilty of.

Just so long as the "A" doesn't stand for "American." This a poor time to be supporting the French - financially or any other way.