Politics and the Airbus

[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!










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[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?
Try using fewer words.
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.