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tcgv 8 hours ago [-]
> Several defence analysts point out that although the KC-46 is the standard tanker of the USAF, it has suffered technical problems and delays that have slowed its competitiveness abroad, to the benefit of the A330 MRTT, which has already been adopted by many NATO and non-NATO allies. In this sense, the Italian choice is seen more as an industrial victory for Airbus than as an American “political defeat”.
The political factor surely played a role here, but this bit at the end of the article also sheds light on Boeing's decline, which predates the current US administration.
While politics acted as a catalyst, Boeing was ultimately defeated by its own undoing.
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
Having doors flying off one of your planes and engine failure causing part of the cowling to bust a window and sucking a passenger out of another is definitely not a bit of politics. Nevermind the bullshit 737Max nonsense. At this point, I'd imagine any Boeing orders left are only in place because Airbus can't keep up. Politics didn't need to come within 10 miles of this decision. It's just the free cherry on top.
stouset 7 hours ago [-]
The engine that failed on the Southwest flight was a CFM International CFM56, which has also been used on multiple Airbus planes including the A320. The engine itself as well as the containment mechanism that’s supposed to prevent this kind of situation were the responsibility of CFM and had nothing to do with Boeing. This could just as easily have happened on an A320.
This example only serves to highlight how popular narratives take hold and get reinforced by laypeople.
Boeing absolutely deserves to be raked through the coals over MCAS, over their deteriorating engineering culture, and over regulatory capture. But blame them for the things they actually carry responsibility for.
dpark 14 minutes ago [-]
> The engine itself as well as the containment mechanism that’s supposed to prevent this kind of situation were the responsibility of CFM and had nothing to do with Boeing.
NTSB seems to think it’s Boeing’s responsibility to redesign the cowl to prevent this.
If we're stringing random facts together to try and make a point, Airbus was found guilty two days ago of manslaughter in the 2009 Air France crash that fell into the ocean.
I think it's fair to call out the parent comment for things that are not exactly caused by Boeing (eg: the engine failure), but I also think it's important to look at the why.
In the case you're referring too, the focus was on poor training and failure to follow up on earlier incidents. It's not the same as designing a system based around a single sensor that is known to fail or forgetting to bolt a door.
4 hours ago [-]
whatevaa 3 hours ago [-]
If you actually read into the case it's more complicated than just it's Airbus fault. It was caused by one of the confused pilots input. Why they were confused is a complicated story.
dghlsakjg 3 hours ago [-]
That particular failure mode would have been impossible in most other planes including all Boeings. 1. Pretty much only Airbus doesn’t have linked controls 2. Pretty much just airbus changes what the controls allow you to do (the “law” as they call it) without input from the pilot.
No other airliner make on earth could have suffered that accident. It would have been extremely obvious what the issue was, and how to solve it on any other aircraft I can think of. This was like a car crash caused by the computer changing how the steering wheel worked mid drive.
I still have no idea how Airbus didn’t catch more flack for that design.
Incidents that are over five years old have minimal impact in terms of current competition between Boing and Airbus.
The airbus A320 family is associated with 1,490 fatalities, there’s just a vast number of flights daily so tiny risks add up. Companies buying new aircraft care far more about maintenance to fuel efficiency than a few rare incidents due to already corrected issues.
harmmonica 7 hours ago [-]
Can you shed a bit more light on this? I can't find any evidence that there are that many fatalities related to that plane, at least related to its operations in flight. Seems like there are few or if my quick look shows even zero fatalities related to it flying. You wrote "associated" but can you define what you mean by that? During manufacturing, maintenance and other non-flight-related incidents?
Retric 7 hours ago [-]
That was a mistake on my part those are A320 numbers not A380.
harmmonica 7 hours ago [-]
Ah, gotcha. Probably not supposed to reply with this, but applaud your quick correction!
ceejayoz 7 hours ago [-]
> The airbus A380 family is associated with 1,490 fatalities…
What? The A380 has never had a single fatality or even injuries.
Yes, corrected remembered the fatalities but should have looked it up anyway.
shevy-java 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah - the mass casualties with regards to Max, changed things a lot. Boeing used to be about enginering; that quality dropped indeed decades ago. Not sure why or how.
lelanthran 4 hours ago [-]
> Boeing used to be about enginering; that quality dropped indeed decades ago.
I just pointed out in a different thread that software is going through that right now.
> Following the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, Boeing’s robust culture eroded. Subsequent safety issues with the Boeing 737 have put the company under international scrutiny and underscored the profound impact of a weakened corporate culture. As Forbes aptly put it, “Boeing’s current travails about safety issues with the 737 MAX 9 can arguably be traced to the company’s weak corporate culture.”
The best and understated part about it is that the culture change was pushed from Boeing side, and at least some people from McD side of the merger were pushing internal memos warning about actions pushed by Boeing-lifer CEO exemplified in then ongoing 7X7 program (future 787)
eastbound 5 hours ago [-]
> Having doors flying off one of your planes (…) definitely not a bit of politics.
It’s a checkmate of the American system. Boeing delegated construction in parts of the country that needed jobs (=politics), who then botched the job and didn’t get sanctioned because it was bad optics to accuse those providers (2013 airframes). More recent events are also a checkmate of the ultrafinanciarization practices, a checkmate of the consultancy / provider / controller model, and a failure of corruption (the FAA/Boeing dinners inherited from the Macdonnell management) in a context where USA rips at the seams (industrial failure, no-one can be trusted as trustworthy) and tries to renew its ideology (apogee with the Trump elections).
That is a fair bit of politics that made Boeing fail.
rootsudo 7 hours ago [-]
No, majority of Boeing orders to foreign countries use USA backed loans or is a significant part of pushing US interests in the world.
The message here, and it’s granted if you’re not aviation, finance or political aware is Italy keeping their aviation sector EU based being In the EU themselves and most likely getting tremendously better financing.
While the Boeing incidents you mentioned are unfortunate and a true consequence of engineering culture eroding at Boeing, it does not dispel the true safety of aviation in general nor the high success of the 737 Max.
ricardonunez 6 hours ago [-]
The Boeing issues started 20 to 25 years ago, it just take a long time to become this bad.
joe_the_user 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, but the decline of Boeing also imo demonstrates relentless American short-term-ism. Gutting the engineering side of the company, optimizing to avoid testing a new plane model (the 737 Max debacle) and so-forth is very characteristic of America today.
jmward01 18 minutes ago [-]
The US stock market is a lag indicator. It is built on perception and whim but, ultimately, is forced to deal with reality. Stories like this don't shift the market, and economies, overnight but they are showing what should be decades of economic and political shift happening relatively in just a few years. In the end this isn't just a signal that Europe has lost faith in the current administration, it is pretty clear that happened a while ago, this is a sign that Europe and others have lost faith in future US administrations. Everyone is a looser here in the long run for many reasons. We really did have it all.
sschueller 8 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile Switzerland is being taken to the cleaners. F35s that had a fix cost in contract with Lockheed are no longer fixed cost because the US says so.
Patriot systen permanently delayed and price going up and up. Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...
Quarrel 8 hours ago [-]
> Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...
Which Switzerland then reluctantly agreed was allowed under the terms.
As you say, totally being taken to the cleaners, and it is unclear how they escape in the short term.
The more this happens though, the more deals like Italy's make senese, irrespective of the performance comparison of the two planes.
If the US is going to be an unreliable partner, that will filter through in many many ways, and the US can hardly blame anyone but themselves (well, I'm sure some fingers will get pointed internally).
Beretta_Vexee 4 hours ago [-]
It’s not just Europeans who are beginning to realize that the U.S. can’t be trusted; Australians are still waiting for a hypothetical delivery date for their AUKUS submarines.
The Gulf states find themselves with too few interceptor missiles and a war in Iran.
The Japanese and Koreans are building as many war ships as they can.
tokai 8 hours ago [-]
I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder. They are losing the European market just as the largest rearmament since ww2 happens.
Maybe they are and its just a lost cause with the US administration.
helsinkiandrew 7 hours ago [-]
> I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder
It doesn’t really matter if your product is better or cheaper, if the customer thinks that service and spare parts might possibly be withdrawn in the future for political (or whatever) reasons they won’t buy your product.
tokai 7 hours ago [-]
That is what they need the political lobbying for. Obviously not to help their pricing.
hgoel 7 hours ago [-]
If you mean they need to lobby the US government to be less schizophrenic, I agree. Though I suspect the government would just decide to start more wars.
If you mean they need to lobby the other governments, I don't think that'll work, the decreasing trust is associated with the US government's actions, not as related to the arms dealers' actions.
thuridas 2 hours ago [-]
Can you lobby to make Trump become not Trump?
shimman 7 hours ago [-]
So they need lobbying to lie to customers? Why would that help people choose Boeing when it ultimately is up the whims of one single individual that can drastically change moods every four years?
There is a reason why imperialism ultimately always fails.
tokai 7 hours ago [-]
No. You do understand how lobbying works right? You don't lobby your customers, you lobby that single individual. Which has never been easier as the current one takes bribes almost directly and has no true opinions.
2 hours ago [-]
8note 3 hours ago [-]
itll be hard for US weapons manufacturers to win when a big part of the rearmament is going to be around deterring the US just as much as deterring Russia
SecretDreams 8 hours ago [-]
They're very scared of their boss and the CEOs are short sighted by virtue of their compensation packages.
spamizbad 7 hours ago [-]
You can’t lobby the Trump or “America First” crowd to not be themselves.
newtonianrules 7 hours ago [-]
You have to understand that the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration and are just as horrified as everyone else with how inept and pathetic this administration is. Unfortunately we’re a minority, the senate’s design (Wyoming has the same number of senators as California even though a small city in CA may have more people than the whole state) and the US is so ridiculously gerrymandered.
Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.
stouset 7 hours ago [-]
This stupidity is not going to simply be waited out. It is becoming even further entrenched.
ericmay 6 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of issues in the American political system but the structure of the Senate is not one of those.
It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.
If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.
wolvoleo 6 hours ago [-]
> That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Yet that is exactly what has been happening twice now.
ericmay 5 hours ago [-]
Well, dissolving the Senate would just make that problem even worse if that's your viewpoint. "Twice now" seems to be a dig at Trump as though MAGA is the only populist movement, but ANTIFA/BLM and other, similar populist groups have taken hold of power in various forms as well, primarily in certain west coast states and cities.
boustrophedon 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, if anything the issue is that the House was capped in seats in 1929 and the population has tripled. Smaller states have an outsized representation in Congress currently.
ericmay 5 hours ago [-]
I'm strongly in favor of expanding the House. I failed to mention that in my original post.
oscillonoscope 6 hours ago [-]
This might have made sense for the original 13 colonies but after westward expansion, it clearly does not. Most of the western state borders were formed for administrative reasons
ericmay 5 hours ago [-]
It still makes sense today. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good balance most of the time.
krior 6 hours ago [-]
> Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.
And the rest of the world has to suffer the consequences. It has been incredible watching americans shrugging off any responsibility.
Insufferable hypocrites.
newtonianrules 3 hours ago [-]
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mmooss 5 hours ago [-]
> the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration
Trump has support from SV and Wall Street leaders, and the whole Republican Party.
> gerrymandered
Trump won the popular vote, and iirc the GOP got more total votes for the House of Representatives. What about for the Senate? Sure NY and CA are big, but so are FL and TX.
newtonianrules 3 hours ago [-]
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p_l 3 hours ago [-]
Foreign Military Sales from USA all go under a very ugly kind of contract where you could argue you're not sure of delivery until after the gear was decommissioned and turned into razor blades. You can't (officially) negotiate it, you can't demand accountability on actual deliveries, the real delivery time is "whenever we get to it", and so on.
It's just that until recently USA at least pretended to care to not use those provisions too much.
kevin_thibedeau 8 hours ago [-]
The USAF also selected the MRTT but corruption took care of that threat to Boeing.
rassimmoc 6 hours ago [-]
I am surprised that USAF selecting MRTT even got so far as to be made public. I would expect it would die in some draft document on someones office PC
throw1234567891 4 hours ago [-]
It’s good for propaganda.
ungreased0675 8 hours ago [-]
Italy probably didn’t want to wait 12 years for delivery. Good choice.
netsharc 7 hours ago [-]
They probably also didn't want a President Vance, Rubio, Junior or Ivanka, to use the availability of parts and tech support as a way to ensure their compliance..
ungreased0675 2 hours ago [-]
Italy is a big supplier for the F-35 and other major US programs, so that knife cuts both ways. I don’t think that was a consideration at all.
ksec 5 hours ago [-]
This is a noob question but wondering if anyone here could answer.
There are plenty of choices for Small and Medium size plane as well as private jet. Why are most commercial airline only buying Boeing and Airbus? And why others aren't making bigger planes to compete?
maxglute 4 hours ago [-]
Industrially boeing / airbus are 100k large companies, i.e. need 300m+ base country size (or in EU case, block size) to support specialized workforce large enough for modern commercial aviation. Economically, fuel costs, i.e. engine maturity makes any entrant that's doesn't have parity engine core tech automatically none viable because simply higher costs due to lifetime fuel costs. (Geo)politically, there's lots of certification / safety drama that incumbents like US/EU will throw to undermine competitors so really also matter of geopolitical power - i.e. apart from engines, PRC COMAC using western components mostly for easier certification, they have large enough internal market to sustain development against economics. Almost no one else has those conditions, except India but they don't have industrial base.
Since topic is tankers, PRC/RU has their own tankers, i.e. for military aviation it's not strictly as difficult since fuel cost less issue. But for strategic aviation (transport/tanking) big efficiency working with commercial chassis / turbofan efficiency.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
> Economically, fuel costs, i.e. engine maturity makes any entrant that's doesn't have parity engine core tech automatically none viable because simply higher costs due to lifetime fuel costs.
Neither Boeing nor Airbus make their own engines. They get them from CFM, GE, Rolls-Royce. Like everyone else. That's not the differentiator.
But it just costs insanely much to get an airliner certified. Even Boeing has been held back by its clients demanding a shared type certificate for the 737max which caused all those deaths due to mcas.
There were of course more players but they've been bought up. And some emerging brands that are excluded from our markets due to sanctions like the Chinese Comac and the Sukhoi Superjet. The superjet is particularly affected because some of its systems were designed by western companies like Honeywell and they've had to make last-minute replacements after the Ukraine war that didn't exactly work out well.
And there's some other players. Embraer is creeping closer to the 737/A320 market.
But anyway so it isn't just Airbus and Boeing really.
maxglute 3 hours ago [-]
>That's not the differentiator.
It's differentiator in sense engine manufactures are part of western aviation industrial complex and can limit access, i.e. COMAC sanctions. Unless you're western core, you do not have guaranteed access. I think Embraer is creeping on to bottom end of narrowbody, but they're far from wide body. And with respect to topic, modern strategic tanking are wide body size, i.e. Embraer E190 is not same heavy league as KC46, MRTT, Y20, Il-78, and Embraer has not demonstrated ability to go beyond regional narrowbody. Fielded widebody options is really just Airbus/Boeing duopoly, AVIC/Xi'an, UAC stumbling along from legacy USSR stack.
wolvoleo 2 hours ago [-]
I travelled on an E195 recently and I have to say it was much more comfortable than any 737 or 320/321 I've been on. Unlike other regionals I've travelled on in the past which were noisy, cramped and bumpy.
Their squircle fuselage works out really well. Really next-gen which makes sense because the Boeing and Airbus designs are decades old. I think they certainly have the chops to scale it up that bit to reach regular narrow body. But I imagine they just don't want to because that might mean trade sanctions from the US.
But I think the restrictions are more artificial/protectionist than actual knowledge. I'm sure sooner rather than later we'll have comacs flying in Europe. The Russian ones depend really on whether they resolve the war situation.
badosu 48 minutes ago [-]
There are indications Embraer might announce a new aircraft at the next Farnborough Airshow, fingers crossed!
iancmceachern 5 hours ago [-]
There are really only 2 choices.
There is a third, Embrarer. They have most of the market in small regional jets in some cases, but those are in reality very different than say a 777 or 787.
These two choices are conglomerates of what used to be a much larger set of manufacturers. In short Boeing, Airbus and it's suppliers are basically what is left of all the old big aerospace manufacturers.
FabHK 4 hours ago [-]
Indeed. Embraer (Brazil) does jetliners carrying up to around 150 pax. So did Bombardier (Canada), though they sold their C-Series to Airbus (now the Airbus A220). Then there's COMAC (China) and UAC (Russia; also a conglomerate of Sukhoi, Tupolev, etc.).
These compete with the smaller versions of the Airbus A320 family (like the discontinued A318 "Baby Bus") or Boeing B737 family.
So, in that narrow-body and regional jet segment there are a few players.
But in the big wide-body (=2 aisles) long-range jets, there's only Airbus and Boeing.
ksec 4 hours ago [-]
>There are really only 2 choices.
For private jets there are Gulfstream, Bombardier, Textron, Dassault, and as you said Embraer. I think there was a recent new Entry, Honda from Japan.
tremon 5 hours ago [-]
These two choices are conglomerates of what used to be a much larger set of manufacturers
This. The entire market has been allowed to be monopolized through mergers and buy-outs. Russia used to have their own aerospace industry (and that fleet was reliable enough to be allowed to fly in Europe) but then Russia happened.
joe_mamba 4 hours ago [-]
>Russia used to have their own aerospace industry (and that fleet was reliable enough to be allowed to fly in Europe) but then Russia happened.
It's absolutely irrelevant what Russia did or could have done here in this industry.
Same with Chinese planes. If they ever manage to make a competitive passenger plane, it will not be allowed certification by US and European authorities purely for political reasons, the same way how their EVs are not allowed for sale in the US or how they aren't allowed to have ASML EUV machines. This isn't a fair game, never was.
The decisions on purchase of aerospace units is 90% (inter-)national politics and only 10% meritocracy, since both Boeing and Airbus are massive defense players making advanced killing machines, and no country wants to directly or indirectly fund the defense industry of their geopolitical rivals.
When a third country needs to chooses between Airbus or Boeing for their flag carrier fleet, they don't objectively compare the operational history and tech specs of Airbus vs Boeing and make the decision based on that, they just ask themselves "do I want to be in bed with EU-France or with Uncle Sam as my main ally and provider for the next 30+ years". Hence why most oil-rich middle eastern states chose Boeing as the US is their main defense provider anyway and don't want to anger them, especially when Donald Orange makes a visit to your state.
That's just how politics works when you operate at that level. Handshakes, dinners and bribes. Always has.
FabHK 4 hours ago [-]
Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad all seem to have fleets that are approximately 50/50 between Boeing and Airbus though.
Sammi 4 hours ago [-]
Sensible.
lysace 5 hours ago [-]
The Chinese government has spent 18 years and an unknown amount of funds trying to compete:
"Truth Social is currently unavailable in your area"
Pity, in Hong Kong I cannot read the wise words of the king.
wolvoleo 4 hours ago [-]
You're not missing anything. It was just a dumb picture of Trump's face looming over an unsuspecting Greenlandic town. Ominous but nothing with any news value
onetokeoverthe 3 hours ago [-]
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shevy-java 6 hours ago [-]
As long as a mad king is ruling over the USA, no US product or service should taint european markets. I fail to see why money should go into companies that are hostile to europeans. Canadians already made that decision months ago (granted, due to the tight coupling of their own market to the USA, this is mega-difficult; most Canadians live on the southern area, aka close to the USA - realistically Canadians can only reduce dependencies, but will never be able to decouple completely, but they had those discussions before, in particular with regards to security. Why invest into a country that became hostile to other countries? Makes indeed no sense. The USA burned all bridges here.)
gibber878 2 hours ago [-]
The US can go fuck itself.
zulux 8 hours ago [-]
Good? A bit of competition is good for everybody. Having one vendor for everything leads to many problems.
The political factor surely played a role here, but this bit at the end of the article also sheds light on Boeing's decline, which predates the current US administration.
While politics acted as a catalyst, Boeing was ultimately defeated by its own undoing.
This example only serves to highlight how popular narratives take hold and get reinforced by laypeople.
Boeing absolutely deserves to be raked through the coals over MCAS, over their deteriorating engineering culture, and over regulatory capture. But blame them for the things they actually carry responsibility for.
NTSB seems to think it’s Boeing’s responsibility to redesign the cowl to prevent this.
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2qmdvmq6o
It's the same airplane as the MRTT, A330.
In the case you're referring too, the focus was on poor training and failure to follow up on earlier incidents. It's not the same as designing a system based around a single sensor that is known to fail or forgetting to bolt a door.
No other airliner make on earth could have suffered that accident. It would have been extremely obvious what the issue was, and how to solve it on any other aircraft I can think of. This was like a car crash caused by the computer changing how the steering wheel worked mid drive.
I still have no idea how Airbus didn’t catch more flack for that design.
The airbus A320 family is associated with 1,490 fatalities, there’s just a vast number of flights daily so tiny risks add up. Companies buying new aircraft care far more about maintenance to fuel efficiency than a few rare incidents due to already corrected issues.
What? The A380 has never had a single fatality or even injuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380#Accidents_and_inci...
> Incidents are over five years old have minimal impact in terms of current competition between Boing and Airbus.
Airbus (and Boeing) has a decade-long backlog. They absolutely do. https://flightplan.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/14/airb...
I just pointed out in a different thread that software is going through that right now.
There's plenty of documentation to be found on the why and how, especially following the 737Max issues: https://team-fsa.com/insights/what-happened-to-boeings-cultu...
> Following the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, Boeing’s robust culture eroded. Subsequent safety issues with the Boeing 737 have put the company under international scrutiny and underscored the profound impact of a weakened corporate culture. As Forbes aptly put it, “Boeing’s current travails about safety issues with the 737 MAX 9 can arguably be traced to the company’s weak corporate culture.”
Or read https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/why-boeings-pr... for Harvard's take on the same situation.
It’s a checkmate of the American system. Boeing delegated construction in parts of the country that needed jobs (=politics), who then botched the job and didn’t get sanctioned because it was bad optics to accuse those providers (2013 airframes). More recent events are also a checkmate of the ultrafinanciarization practices, a checkmate of the consultancy / provider / controller model, and a failure of corruption (the FAA/Boeing dinners inherited from the Macdonnell management) in a context where USA rips at the seams (industrial failure, no-one can be trusted as trustworthy) and tries to renew its ideology (apogee with the Trump elections).
That is a fair bit of politics that made Boeing fail.
The message here, and it’s granted if you’re not aviation, finance or political aware is Italy keeping their aviation sector EU based being In the EU themselves and most likely getting tremendously better financing.
While the Boeing incidents you mentioned are unfortunate and a true consequence of engineering culture eroding at Boeing, it does not dispel the true safety of aviation in general nor the high success of the 737 Max.
Patriot systen permanently delayed and price going up and up. Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...
Which Switzerland then reluctantly agreed was allowed under the terms.
As you say, totally being taken to the cleaners, and it is unclear how they escape in the short term.
The more this happens though, the more deals like Italy's make senese, irrespective of the performance comparison of the two planes.
If the US is going to be an unreliable partner, that will filter through in many many ways, and the US can hardly blame anyone but themselves (well, I'm sure some fingers will get pointed internally).
The Gulf states find themselves with too few interceptor missiles and a war in Iran.
The Japanese and Koreans are building as many war ships as they can.
Maybe they are and its just a lost cause with the US administration.
It doesn’t really matter if your product is better or cheaper, if the customer thinks that service and spare parts might possibly be withdrawn in the future for political (or whatever) reasons they won’t buy your product.
If you mean they need to lobby the other governments, I don't think that'll work, the decreasing trust is associated with the US government's actions, not as related to the arms dealers' actions.
There is a reason why imperialism ultimately always fails.
Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.
It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.
If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.
Yet that is exactly what has been happening twice now.
And the rest of the world has to suffer the consequences. It has been incredible watching americans shrugging off any responsibility.
Insufferable hypocrites.
Trump has support from SV and Wall Street leaders, and the whole Republican Party.
> gerrymandered
Trump won the popular vote, and iirc the GOP got more total votes for the House of Representatives. What about for the Senate? Sure NY and CA are big, but so are FL and TX.
It's just that until recently USA at least pretended to care to not use those provisions too much.
There are plenty of choices for Small and Medium size plane as well as private jet. Why are most commercial airline only buying Boeing and Airbus? And why others aren't making bigger planes to compete?
Since topic is tankers, PRC/RU has their own tankers, i.e. for military aviation it's not strictly as difficult since fuel cost less issue. But for strategic aviation (transport/tanking) big efficiency working with commercial chassis / turbofan efficiency.
Neither Boeing nor Airbus make their own engines. They get them from CFM, GE, Rolls-Royce. Like everyone else. That's not the differentiator.
But it just costs insanely much to get an airliner certified. Even Boeing has been held back by its clients demanding a shared type certificate for the 737max which caused all those deaths due to mcas.
There were of course more players but they've been bought up. And some emerging brands that are excluded from our markets due to sanctions like the Chinese Comac and the Sukhoi Superjet. The superjet is particularly affected because some of its systems were designed by western companies like Honeywell and they've had to make last-minute replacements after the Ukraine war that didn't exactly work out well.
And there's some other players. Embraer is creeping closer to the 737/A320 market.
But anyway so it isn't just Airbus and Boeing really.
It's differentiator in sense engine manufactures are part of western aviation industrial complex and can limit access, i.e. COMAC sanctions. Unless you're western core, you do not have guaranteed access. I think Embraer is creeping on to bottom end of narrowbody, but they're far from wide body. And with respect to topic, modern strategic tanking are wide body size, i.e. Embraer E190 is not same heavy league as KC46, MRTT, Y20, Il-78, and Embraer has not demonstrated ability to go beyond regional narrowbody. Fielded widebody options is really just Airbus/Boeing duopoly, AVIC/Xi'an, UAC stumbling along from legacy USSR stack.
Their squircle fuselage works out really well. Really next-gen which makes sense because the Boeing and Airbus designs are decades old. I think they certainly have the chops to scale it up that bit to reach regular narrow body. But I imagine they just don't want to because that might mean trade sanctions from the US.
But I think the restrictions are more artificial/protectionist than actual knowledge. I'm sure sooner rather than later we'll have comacs flying in Europe. The Russian ones depend really on whether they resolve the war situation.
There is a third, Embrarer. They have most of the market in small regional jets in some cases, but those are in reality very different than say a 777 or 787.
These two choices are conglomerates of what used to be a much larger set of manufacturers. In short Boeing, Airbus and it's suppliers are basically what is left of all the old big aerospace manufacturers.
These compete with the smaller versions of the Airbus A320 family (like the discontinued A318 "Baby Bus") or Boeing B737 family.
So, in that narrow-body and regional jet segment there are a few players.
But in the big wide-body (=2 aisles) long-range jets, there's only Airbus and Boeing.
For private jets there are Gulfstream, Bombardier, Textron, Dassault, and as you said Embraer. I think there was a recent new Entry, Honda from Japan.
This. The entire market has been allowed to be monopolized through mergers and buy-outs. Russia used to have their own aerospace industry (and that fleet was reliable enough to be allowed to fly in Europe) but then Russia happened.
It's absolutely irrelevant what Russia did or could have done here in this industry.
Same with Chinese planes. If they ever manage to make a competitive passenger plane, it will not be allowed certification by US and European authorities purely for political reasons, the same way how their EVs are not allowed for sale in the US or how they aren't allowed to have ASML EUV machines. This isn't a fair game, never was.
The decisions on purchase of aerospace units is 90% (inter-)national politics and only 10% meritocracy, since both Boeing and Airbus are massive defense players making advanced killing machines, and no country wants to directly or indirectly fund the defense industry of their geopolitical rivals.
When a third country needs to chooses between Airbus or Boeing for their flag carrier fleet, they don't objectively compare the operational history and tech specs of Airbus vs Boeing and make the decision based on that, they just ask themselves "do I want to be in bed with EU-France or with Uncle Sam as my main ally and provider for the next 30+ years". Hence why most oil-rich middle eastern states chose Boeing as the US is their main defense provider anyway and don't want to anger them, especially when Donald Orange makes a visit to your state.
That's just how politics works when you operate at that level. Handshakes, dinners and bribes. Always has.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac
They have delivered 185 aircraft to domestic airlines. Maybe Africa is next?
Note that they so far use engines from western companies - GE and Safran. In fact, the vast majority of their primary suppliers are from outside of China: https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinas-comac-a...
I guess it takes a bit of a war chest to get into this business simply because it isn't very easy.
His last odd 'truth' about it was six hours ago https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1166240468099...
Pity, in Hong Kong I cannot read the wise words of the king.