Comment by FabHK
2 years ago
Sure, the task is incredibly difficult. But aviation engineering is exacting and rule-based and slow and expensive (no "move fast and break things") for just that reason, and Boeing (and Airbus) basically got it right for decades. But clearly Boeing dropped the ball somewhere in the past two decades, while Airbus (so far) hasn't.
So, no, the failures were not inevitable, but contingent, and what's needed now is to analyse how/why they were allowed to develop.
I assume that, for a variety of reasons (political, economic, cultural), Airbus is under somewhat less pressure to maximize shareholder returns than Boeing has been subject to for last couple decades. Theres probably a pretty interesting case study to be written about the outcome of stakeholder capitalism and something more focused on short-term shareholder value.
In other words, Airbus isn’t doing too bad for a European jobs program.