Airbus “ships” 2 planes a day
Wouldn’t it be easier to fly them?
Beleaguered aerospace outfit Boeing has revealed how many commercial aircraft it shipped in 2024, and the news isn’t good. The company on Tuesday revealed it sent 348 new aircraft down the runway last year, 265 of them 737s in addition to 18 767s, 14 777s, and 51 787s. Building an aircraft almost every day sounds like quite …
Andy Mac,
It's cute that you still believe in the myth that heavier than air things can fly.
Why do you think that airports have jetways to take you to the "plane" - from which you can't actually see the plane? Clearly it's because we're still using airships! All the pictures of planes and pictures of plaen crashes are there to fool the sheeple. We're still flying in hydrogen dirigibles. There was a brief period where we used safe helium, but with improvements in safety standards it was decided to go back to hydrogen for extra payload capacity and to save money. Hence all the helium suddenly becoming available for balloons.
You may think your flight only takes a few hours, but that's because they drug your food and change the times and dates on your watches and devices while you're asleep. You might think you've got jetlag, but actually it's a drug induced hangover.
I mean, of course they can't fly. The wings don't even flap or anything!
Nonsense, we use swallows, lots of swallows.
Admittedly it takes some organization to get enough of the little birds to grip a fully laden 747
They are also prone to wild-cat industrial action - that's why you hear of flights being brought down by a bird strike.
This post has been deleted by its author
Gratuitous plug here for the book "A Higher Call" which narrates a real-life incident in the later stages of the Second World War, when a Bf-109 pilot encountered a very, very swiss-cheesed B-17 barely limping through the air over Germany, and - in defiance of orders - escorted it out of Axis-controlled airspace, with the bomber subsequently landing in England.
The incident was hushed-up for decades afterwards; for obvious reasons, the German pilot didn't tell his superiors what he'd done. On the Allied side, the American crew of the B-17 were sworn to secrecy; essentially, USAF/RAF high command didn't want their pilots to assume that if they got into trouble, they could rely on the mercy and humanity of any intercepting Luftwaffe pilots.
The story only came out years later, when the captain of the B-17 met the German pilot at a reunion, and they became firm friends for the rest of their lives. The book is well worth a read; the author frames the incident with the back-story and war experiences of both the B-17 and the Messerschmitt pilots.
I did wonder. Assume some are for KC46 tanker conversion as well? Boing's future seems to be on the 777X freighter, but that doesn't exist either. Airbus has the only true next-gen freighter with the A350F, which will exist very soon, I believe. The first carbon fibre freighter!
Thanks for being so quick! It was a bit confusing in the article.
It is only a part of the commercial aviation division of Bombardier, and we knew this. Another part went to MHI Regional Jets.
What remains with Bombardier is the business jet part, which designs and manufactures, among other things, the Global business jets, and versions for other purposes.
From Wikipedia: "On 12 February 2020, Bombardier sold its share in Airbus Canada Limited Partnership, the holding company for the A220 programme, for $591 million; Airbus now has a 75% share, with the remaining 25% owned by Investissement Québec This sale marked Bombardier's "strategic exit" from the commercial aviation sector..." https://tinyurl.com/4d2rkjd4
Hope this helps... -eb
> Bombardier's "strategic exit" from the commercial aviation sector
Ah, thanks, that makes more sense than TFA's simple wording, which implied that Bombardier had been bought in its entirety by Airbus in 2020. 'Cos it seemed a bit odd that Airbus would want to get into the other stuff, like train building, as well (that bit went to Alstom IIRC).
The C series threatened the 737 so Boeing got it's chums in Washington (the other one) to put a 300% tarrif on it.
A troubled Bombardier was forced to sell it to Airbus who have ironically much greater manufacturing capabilities than Bombardier so the aircraft is now going to be a much bigger threat to Boeing
Actually it was a bit more fun than that. Basically Boeing decided to try and remove a competitor by playing fast and loose with trade agreements and encouraged the Trump administration to put huge inport tariffs on Bombardiers new aircraft, which were competing with the some of the 737 models.
Rather than removing the aircraft, it forced them into the arms of Airbus so strengthened the line. From this we can learn 2 lessons
1. It would of been more productive for Boeing to make better products, rather than hide behind shady eco politics
2. The use of tariffs to control trade, often has unintended consequences which go against the original purpose of imposing them
Fortunately that lesson has been learned, and the US won't make that mistake again, right...right?
There's footage of a test flight where they flew the Harrier under a crane, hooked it up to a special hook on the fuselage and turned off the engines. Some precision flying and crane work there - I mean what could possibly go wrong?
Apparently someone had the harebrained idea of launching them off ships that weren't actually aircraft carriers. Big crane on ship, magic aeroplane. It'll all be fine! It's not like wildly swinging a crane from side to side has any bad effects on trying to hook loads up to it, when there's also wind and sea goes both sideways and up and down. Perfectly sensible thing to test...
Precedent. A previous Hawker product was involved in an equally hair-brained concept: the CAM Ship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAM_ship Gee. Whatever could go wrong...
And, of course, there was the 'parasite fighter' concept, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_aircraft last seen with the Goblin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_XF-85_Goblin which is one of my favorite deathtraps, right up there with the Me-163 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet and the Ba-349 Natter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachem_Ba_349_Natter both of which were more dangerous to their pilots than to the enemy. Merely hanging an aircraft from a shipboard crane is relatively sane in comparison. Hanging an aircraft from a shipboard crane is also in the Grand Tradition of Insane British Military Projects, alongside the Great Panjandrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panjandrum I particularly like the Wiki description of its final test. Rue, Britannia, Britannia rues the day that they let certain people near piles of cash.
The CAM ships were a great idea. Just looked that up - via your Wiki page, and there were a lot fewer launches than I'd expected. But 8 kills for 8 launches (and so lost aircraft) - and only one pilot killed - which is suprisingly good odds. Given that every flight ended up in the sea.
We also have to remember that Sea Harriers can land on container ships. The Alraigo Incident. Admittedly that sounds like a bad airport thriller title, but when you're lost and out of fuel any sufficiently flat thing looks like a tempting place to land...
Making planes is difficult, complex and involves a lot of components. We know this and so do Boeing. In order to reach a successful outcome it needs good management who know what they are doing and do their job of managing and supervising. This involves skills and expense.
Unfortunately, as long as the financial board get their money, their conscience allows them to shut out the noise. If they were booted out tomorrow, they'd still be better off, for life, than almost everyone else; workers and shareholders. What's the incentive for them to do anything different?
Much of Boeing's ills stem from the time that the Beancounters took over. Before that Engineers were in charge and things got done. Yes, it was close getting the 747 into production before the company went TISTUP but they survived.
The Beanconters came in and started reducing costs. Many of the most skilled people left. Quality went into the swamp and we get to where they are today.
I dealt with them when the 747 came on-stream as I was working on the Flight Simulators for SAA and Lufthansa (circa 1970/71). I found the people in Seattle very professional.
If Boeing don't change culture and fast, they won't exist in 3-4 years.
Perhaps, but there's massive risks in developing new airframe and engines (even upgrading old ones, which of course is relevant here). Airlines still trust Boeing, and all that's required to rebalance opinion is a mis-step by Airbus.
Airbus went through a very sticky patch with the A380 primarily due to wiring issues that cost the company about €5bn, but now the A380 is seen as a reliable workhorse that's very popular with passengers. Engine makers face similar sorts of risks - Rolls Royce were bankrupted many decades ago by developing the RB211 and latterly there's been both supply chain issues for RR spares and problems on the cutting edge XWB; Pratt & Whitney have recently sucked up costs of $6-7bn relating to faults on the PW1100G and their subcontractors a further $1bn or so, General Electric and CFM have their own problems with Leap engine durability and supply chain issues.
If (and a big if) the 737 Max problem had been spotted in service with time to fix it, then the subsequent Boeing issues around the door blowout, the development problems with the 777X, and extra checks on 787s would be seen as "normal for an aircraft maker", and Boeing wouldn't be in the huge hole they are. Worth thinking that a couple of years before Boeing's MCAS disasters, Airbus lost an A400M due to shonky software, but as it was a test flight that "only" lost 4 lives and no dirt stuck. And last November extra airframe checks were ordered on A350s.
In some respects your right, but definitely not all. Every firm goes through sticky patches, BUT Boeing's whole problems now, come from the company culture that has been instilled by management over the last many years. And those issues are coming home to roost now.
I have visited the floor at Airbus, if something is not right, and the shop floor staff DONT report it. Then they are in the sh&t. At Boeing, any attempt to report a problem is met by silence or being told you're at risk of losing your job if you continue to make a noise. There are numberous whistleblowers (even going before congress) talking about this issue. That's a very different mentality, and if you cant see how thats relevant for an a aircraft manufacturer, then I cant help you.
Combine that with a level of regulatory capture, that was truly astounding and you have a firm that has lost all focus on anything but that which improves profit. Safety and the customer be damned. I would also contend with your statement that airlines still trust Boeing. That's not what the order books say, a huge number of orders for the 737 MAX have been cancelled, which says airlines dont trust Boeing to fix the problems. The order book for Airbus looks a lot healthier.
This is really a prime example of taking a highly respected company, changing it's workplace culture to one purely focused on profit, and then watching it crash and burn. I hope we dont get to that point really, but I'd say it took 20 years of changing the culture to hit this point. Does Boeing really have 20 years to change it back?
"airlines dont trust Boeing to fix the problems. The order book for Airbus looks a lot healthier."
I'd agree Airbus are doing better, but it's freshly reported that Boeing have a year end backlog of 5,595 aircraft. That says a lot of airlines have a lot of confidence in Boeing.
"a huge number of orders for the 737 MAX have been cancelled"
Boeing's cancellation figures for 2024 are disproportionately affected by a cancelled order of 100 737s, and that cancellation was because the airline in question went bust.
"Does Boeing really have 20 years to change it back?"
Based on my experience of culture change in large organisations, I don't think it will take 20 years for Boeing to institute a better safety and engineering culture, more like 6-8. The company are well aware that they are in the Last Chance Saloon. It's a tribute to Boeing's engineers (and even some McD guys) that it took twenty years for the cracks to become apparent. I'd also ask if you think the airline industry afford to see Boeing fade away, and then find Airbus have a near monopoly?
Even with Boeing's problems, air travel remains the safest form of travel, and the witch hunt against Boeing helps nobody.
https://www.financecharts.com/stocks/BA/cash-flow/repurchase-of-capital-stock
Turn the time window to 20 years and see what it shows: the squeezing of costs and cutting of corners hasn't been to keep the company afloat, or finance new products. Instead it results in the generation of cash, and with nothing "worthwhile" to invest in within the company, it gets used to make shareholders happy.
Lots of tech companies do the same, but Boeing is the poster child for chronically weakening a company for repeated short term financial gain through share buy backs. And it's a very addictive drug, once you've started the market will punish you if you stop or postpone buy backs.
"the A380 is seen as a reliable workhorse that's very popular with passengers"
But not, unfortunately, airlines, who didn't buy enough to justify continuing production after 2021....
Don't get me wrong, I've flown on an A380 once (long haul, cattle class) and it was a lot nicer than the wide bodied 777 I flew on for the return trip, but passengers don't buy aircraft, airlines do.
"they don't fit in with the (currently) fashionable hub and spoke approach to flying, particularly in the US"
Hub and spoke refers to the practice of running big planes to major destinations, and smaller flights to take passengers onwards to regional airports. It was exactly that (long range) market that the A380 was designed for, but it lost out not so much because of the infrastructure, but because airlines worked out that direct flights were more popular and cheaper.
"passengers don't buy aircraft, airlines do." <A380 production ended>
Completely correct, but it doesn't undermine my point which was simply that it wasn't just Boeing who struggled with engineering issues. Not only did the A380 come to market late, it had double the original business case development costs.
Your point emphasises that Airbus mis-judged the market for the A380, betting on a hub and spoke business model, whereas Boeing correctly identified that single deck twin motors were the way forward with more direct flights. Airbus' response in the A350 has been impressively successful given that Airbus were 4-5 years behind the 787.
I think that a difference between Boeing today and the others you list is that the others are seen as cock-ups in design and manufacture whereas Boeing's issues are seen as a fundamental degradation in a their safety culture. You can fix design and manufacturing relatively quickly but culture takes a long time to change. I've worked in aviation in many roles - manufacturing aircraft, airport engineering and ATC. Safety is at the start, the heart and the end of everything. You don't just train new recruits in it, they absorb it, it cocoons and guides them and everything they do. In the places I've worked bypassing safety was never a shortcut or cost saving to anything.
Agreed.
I'm sorry for Mr Ortberg, but his presence is too little, too late to restore the company’s culture and regain a leadership position.
He's got decades of rot to cut off first, starting with everyone on the Board and going down, like a surgeon cuts off gangrenous tissue.
A delicate exercise at best.
I wish him luck.
KittenHuffer,
and then take decades getting a new set of products designed and built .... to get back the reputation that they had before.
I think you go too far. Boeing have certainly taken a lot of reputational damage that'll take years to fix, and then still be thrown in their face in the form of jokes and jibes whenever there's a problem for years after that. It's also certanly not a given that they can fix it.
But they don't need to burn down the whole company, just fix the problems. They'll probably need to jettison some useless managers along the way - who are too wedded to the old system of cutting corners. But corporate turnarounds happen all the time.
There's nothing wrong with their aircraft - apart from some of the designs being dated and at the end of their ability to keep being updated. I think it was 2017 when we had an entire year with not a single large commercial aircraft crash in the entire world. At least half of those planes were Boeing. Air travel is still incredibly safe. It's going to be a challenge to get new designs done, but then it often is.
What they need to do is keep fixing problems. It's not a given they'll succeed - but I think even Boeing realise they're in a hole and PR and bullshit alone isn't going to get them out of it.
The trouble is they've gone too far down the drain.
Their culture is completely broken. The shop floor don't trust management, management don't trust the engineers, and the upper management and board have absolutely no idea what the company does. And the regulators don't trust anyone at Boeing or the FAA.
Fixing that requires almost every Boeing manager, VP/CxO and board member to be fired and replaced - but replaced by whom?
On top of that, there is a lot wrong with their airframes.
For starters, the 737 family should have been long retired. The reasons for the Max disasters are pretty simple - upper management wanted a new airframe to compete with Airbus but refused to let the engineers design a new airframe, and secondly decided that it was acceptable to lie to the regulators about what they'd done.
So now Boeing are not only years behind on developing the new airframes they need, but they don't have the resources, goodwill and orders to survive those years. They've also outsourced so much that they may not even know how.
There will almost certainly be a fire sale sometime in the next decade, because that really is the only way a "US-owned" long haul commercial airliner can continue to exist.
And of course, the stock and bond markets know this, making raising funds ... difficult.
This post has been deleted by its author
>management don't trust the engineers,
What engineers?
All the engineers that had worked on their last new aircraft design, the 787 20years ago, were pensioned off when McD took over.
They failed to merge with Embraer to get its designers and there may be some issues accessing their shiny new Moscow Design Center.
Hopefully, while they did announce it would be 20 years before they would consider any new design. Lots of bright young engineers didn't believe them and all decided do Aeronautical Engineering degrees anyway. These people can now be summoned from their well paid silicon-valley jobs to move to Seattle and invent the 797 from scratch. Or you can just get in a bunch of H1Bs from China.
Amazed they're still delivering so many ancient 767s. Mostly freighters or for KC46 military conversion, I assume?
Meanwhile, it's 5 whole years since the first flight of the 777X, and it's still nowhere near certification. A disaster for Boing and so many airline customers, including BA, who are getting very angry. The original 777 programme in the 90s was so much swifter and more successful, despite it being a radically all-new design at the time. Boing was run by engineers in those days, I suppose. Oh, and there's the 737MAX, where 2 of the 4 variants also remain un-certified.
As for the 797, I suppose we'll be waiting until 2040...
Airbus is also having issues, thousands of A320-neo's will have to be grounded for longer time due to issues with the PW-1100G engines.
Plane manufacturers experience the same issues as car manufacturers, the lemmings race for less fuel consumption and more features pressures everyone to start using new and often unproved technology that may rear its ugly head after some time, often biting its owner hard in the wallet.
If Boeing would still be producing technically perfected 727's, 737-200's and 707's using JT3D's, everything would be fine.
Adjusted for inflation, a 1973 model year 727-200 would cost USD 34 million in todays dollars, a 737 Max 7 cost nowadays USD 99 million, so planes got three times more expensive.
Not taking into account that a 727-200 is faster and has a higher seat capacity than a 737 Max 7.
The MD-88s in service all have JT8D-200s installed (larger diameter) and likely have some form of hush kit. The 727 used JT8D-1 through -17 engines (smaller diameter, the -200 could not be installed in the No2/centerline position) was a Class 2 noise aircraft and needed hush-kits and other modifications to be quiet enough to meet class-3 noise limits. Many were updated but it was only of limited success and fuel burn was definitely an issue. Which is why versions of the MD-88 are still flying but the 727 went out of service in 2015 iirc.
P&W’s woes are leaving the market ripe for RR to do a spin of their new Ultrafan for engines in that class. That could cause CFM a lot of trouble too.
I’m sure the only reason why they haven’t yet is because P&W might fix their issues. But the longer it goes on the more chances there are that Airbus will ask RR to do it…
For those airlines that picked A320 and CFM engines like EasyJet, well they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
"many airline customers, including BA, who are getting very angry"
Airlines are very used to problems from airframe and engine makers. These are inevitable when the airlines press for faster delivery, lowest cost, and highest efficiency products. They'll certainly look to commercially exploit any delays or faults, but angry? I'd hope their management were more realistic. Worth noting that Singapore Airlines ordered A350 XWB in 2006, and full certification was only completed in 2014.
We used to refer to the cutting edge of science as "rocket science". I think the engineering of modern aircraft and their engines are considerably more challenging than slinging a rocket into orbit.
The A350 had some minor delays, but had a pretty smooth entry into service and now a great track record. The 787 was years late, and the 777X is now even more years late. Boeing has really not had a properly successful major civil programme since the 90s. Perhaps the 747-8? But that ended up being a rather small volume niche product, despite being technically impressive. Again, the original 777, and the 737NG, were much less trouble than what has come since.
No, anger is pretty much the mood at the moment.
With Boeing in particular the issues all stem from the senior management, the very people that the customers deal with directly. So it feels more like a personal thing than it ever did before.
You can sense this from some of the actions that the airlines have done. RyanAir and Emirates both sent their own engineers in to Boeing factories to do their own audits. If that isn’t a “I don’t trust you personally anymore” statement, I don’t know what is.
Boeing’s historical approach to apologies hasn’t helped either. They’ve basically said “what are you going to do about it then?” because they know that their customers can’t easily go elsewhere. Following the door blowout some of those customers have decided that they do have a choice and that the one or two aircraft they can get out of Airbus early are worth fighting for.
What this has done is marketise A320 production slots. There are airlines with long established orders now selling them to United for a profit and a price discount from Airbus to take a later slot. Making money out of a plane that’s not even been delivered to you yet is - in the Airline business - a smart move and a good result.
A quick look at
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus
would reveal that Airbus is in fact a Spanish-British-German-French corporation. Essentially the pooling of the best part of European civil airliner industry. Plus a serious military section, which is mainly German. It also owns the Canadian civil airliner industry and is somehow even connected to Turkish and Italian aerospace manufacturing.
It is still controlled by the German and French governments by means of a special shareholding structure.
Airbus is one of the few European projects which actually work nicely, unlike the € currency and border defence.
Always funny to see how little Anglosaxon journalists know about the world.
These are essentially German-designed and -made helicopters, built in Donauwörth, Bavaria. One of the most agile and reliable helicopters in existence, due to its rigid rotor and many duplicated systems, including the engines.
A long time ago this company was called Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm. Mr Bölkow was the chief Designer of the Bo 105.
So the current H145(a face lifted Bo 105) helicopter is essentially a German product, sold under the Airbus Helicopter label.
"Airbus is one of the few European projects which actually work nicely"
For some definitions of "work nicely" yes. (Let's just say that while english is supposed to be the main language in the consortium there's an awful amount of French getting spoken at the main Airbus airliner plants)
And then people from any of those site have to go to the main offices in Toulouse for testing, design meetings, etc and the french (even if they are in the minority) will try to insist on talking french. English is better on the corporate level because the majority of engineers in this day and age have a decent grasp of English and more importantly engineering English. Yet the French want to talk french, which basically only they speak decently.
Airbus Manching and Donauwörth are essentially corporations of their own with R+D, advanced development, customer service, manufacturing and the entire German-speaking management structure.
Plus they are intertwined with partners such as BAE and the Italians to deliver world class fighters and helicopters. The helos are even sold to the U.S. Army.
Only the highest levels of Manching and Donauwörth need to speak French, if at all.
I am always doing very well in Gallica with three words of Latin ;-)
And it’s to Toulouse Blagnac that you have to go to plead to be allowed to place an order.
British Airways had to do that once. They’d annoyed John Leahy of Airbus because BA were simply using Airbus quotes to drive down Boeing prices. So John Leahy stopped giving quotes and BA stopped asking for them. BA later got to the point where they finally decided they absolutely had to have some A320s and emailed Leahy for a quote. No reply. A letter. No reply. A hand written letter. No reply. A phone call. Not returned. And so on. It ended up with the boss of BA having to go to Blagnac personally, wait in the outer office for an inordinate amount of time, and then finally being seen by Leahy who gave him a full price no discount take it or leave it deal. BA signed on the spot.
That's entirely down to the airlines.
Some of them like to cram in far too many seats, some of them prefer leg room (and thus more airfreight cargo space)
It's also the reason the "door plug" exists. An airline that fits fewer seats can delete a pair of emergency exits, saving weight and thus fuel. RyanAir weren't affected by that grounding because they stuff in the absolute legal maximum number of seats, and thus require all the emergency exit doors.
They've got a big order backlog, so if they had maintained the same number of shipments despite the labor issues and more importantly despite the quality/safety issues, it would be hard to imagine they had made any meaningful improvements on the quality/safety front.
Shipping fewer isn't a guarantee they have made any meaningful improvements, but shipping the same number would pretty much amount to a guarantee they hadn't.
The problem with Boeing’s backlog is that it’s not big enough to pay for the company’s debt. Probably.
From an investor point of view it should be seen as a zombie company. The only reason it’s not totally folded is because there’s too many big players inc US Gov who would be in serious trouble if the company did actually fold. The problem is that a Plan B is unthinkable but the longer Boeing limp on the more likely it is that the World needs a plan B.
The only easy and viable plan B is to allow Airbus to win and take over. That’s especially unthinkable to Airbus who are thought to be desperate to not become a global monopoly because of the trouble that’ll cause them. Hence why they’ve not moved to wipe out the 777x when they easily could, etc.
You do realize that backlogs are typically constant. It isn't like the order book Boeing has today is all the orders they will ever receive, so once they have produced all the planes currently on order there will be no more business!
Boeing has financial issues to be sure, but saying "their order backlog isn't enough to pay their debt so they're a zombie company" is an insane amount of cluelessness about how the aerospace industry has always functioned.
Obviously Boeing is going to have a harder time getting new orders so long as they continue to have production/quality issues. But they will still (are still) getting new orders and will get them at a faster rate if they do manage to resolve those issues.
The A220 figures - small though they are - are bigger than Bombardier’s original capacity. Supply chain size is probably the fundamental limiting factor but with Airbus backing it and sales looking good there’s every reason to for the supply chain to increase its capacity.
The Boeing re acquisition of Spirit may help as Airbus is getting the Spirit owned Belfast plant that makes the wings so Airbus is ithen able to scale that operation up.