Comment by Cheer2171
2 years ago
> That's not to let everybody off the hook
But you are.
The only flaw in your argument is that the entire aerospace industry has managed to pull off what you claim is a miracle we shouldn't expect to be the standard... for decades. Only when Boeing lost their engineering culture that they and only they have been failing to this extent. Whatever Airbus is doing is working.
> the entire aerospace industry
2 companies?
> a miracle we shouldn't expect to be the standard... for decades
In the past few decades, the number of scheduled flights has grown tremendously, the number of aircraft has grown, traffic has increased substantially at many major airports, fuel economy demands have become increasingly important... (which means those old aircraft aren't as viable anymore) A lot has changed, which requires new aircraft to compensate. I think all of this should be considered. Remember that the incident rate per million miles or per thousand flight hours is _down_ today compared to the imagined golden period in the past.
> 2 companies?
The industry is obviously more than 2 companies. Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier, and likely in the future, Comac, Mitsubishi, and UAC. This is ignoring the (primarily) civil aviation companies, military manufacturers (who sometimes venture into commercial, e.g., Lockheed's Tristar), and the entire supply chain that feed into those manufacturers.
It's true that other jets exist, especially regional jets, but remember that these serve overall a fairly small percentage of the seat-miles (aka miles flown * number of seats) overall since they are smaller and fly shorter routes.
In some ways this doesn't matter that much (since these planes might actually do many more takeoffs and landings per day/week/lifetime and have to be engineered for that), but in other ways it does matter a lot.
As for the other companies you name, I will admit I am not familiar with them. Is there something relevant to add to the discussion from those companies? I would be curious to learn more
2 replies →
> 2 companies?
That's not fair. There are lots of Bombardier and Embraer planes flying commercial flights in the US.