Comment by tcgv
1 day 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
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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.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2qmdvmq6o
It's the same airplane as the MRTT, A330.
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.
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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.
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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.
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?
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> The airbus A380 family is associated with 1,490 fatalities…
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...
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A380? Did you mean A320?
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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.
Not sure why or how
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.
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> 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.
> 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.
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.
The Boeing issues started 20 to 25 years ago, it just take a long time to become this bad.
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.