How the USA Is Losing the Aviation Industry Battle

Airbus has a CEO that used to be a test flight engineer and pilot, Boeings CEO used to be an Accountant. That says it all.

Boeing is a prime example of what chasing short term shareholder gains will do to a company in the long run.

Boeing once represented American aviation industry but now its an example of corporate greed 😢

I'm an "Airbus fan" and have been very enthusiastic when the 380 was launched. I love aviation and airplanes. However, I feel sad about Boeing, not because I like the company but because competition is necessary to have innovation and progress.

I recently retired from Boeing after a 40 year career. We all knew the upper management became corrupted due to short term greed and no future planning starting about 1990. There has been little coherent leadership the past 20 years. Very sad to see the drastic decline of a once great aircraft company.

Boeing is a prime example of American corporatism. Short term profits over all else. Shareholder and executive compensation above safety of the public.

Boeing did not so much lose the race as it simply stopped running and then shot itself in the foot. Airbus plods along doing the boring things such as caring for its employees and for the safety of its passengers. It’s simple recipe for financial success has been to design and engineer the best aircraft, vertically integrate manufacturing of critical components and implement stringent quality standards during assembly. Boeing, by abandoning such principles, has handed Airbus the win.

I wouldnt be so hard on the A-380. It is an engineering marvel, the biggest passenger plane ever built, with an almost flawless track record, and zero fatalities. The only problem it had that Airbus couldnt predict the future of air traffic, but that alone wouldnt earn them to destroy this wonderful know-how and let it disintegrate, because of one bad decision, what noone knew will be a bad decision. It could as well turn out the move that revolutionized commercial air traffic as we know it.

All of our defense contractors are grossly overpaid for their contracts, and I personally think it has a lot more to do with the fact that our politicians who award the contracts are both lobbied and allowed to own stock in said defense contractors.

Boeing has always been a company lead by engineers. At one point, they begun to put emphasis on stock value more than aircraft quality. At that point, they found out that Airbus was making better planes. Fire the bean-counters, stop all offshoring, re-hire the engineers. If the stockholders complain, take Boing private. Being the best is all what counts...

You forgot to mention that in the 90‘s the NSA spied on Airbus and gave that Information to Boeing, airbus lost mayor sales due to this. This came out in the Echelon Skandal. Europe was very naïve on this, still is.

I've always thought that Boeing's biggest mistakes were (1) moving its headquarters out of Seattle and (2) allowing Mcdonnall Douglas to become part of its operation.

As a pilot who has flown both Boeing and Airbus I can say attest that Boeing is losing the race badly in both quality and efficiency of their aircraft. I don’t want to see the airliner business become a monopoly but Boeing needs to seriously step up their game.

I started at Boeing in 1983. I was both and engineer and a manager. Boeing acquired MD in 1996. MD had just lost in the F-22 and F-35 runoff. It also had yet to make a commercial airplane sale in years. At the time of the acquisition, MD had been mismanaged, had few promising long-term revenue opportunities, and was essentially the walking dead. Due to an unfortunate chain of events, Harry Stonecipeher, the former CEO of McDonnell Douglas, took over the CEO position at Boeing. When Stocipher pushed the company to focus on short-term financial returns by consolidating operations and selling off Boeing assets. Surprisingly, Stonecipher put his inferior managers into key leadership positions, pushing better Boeing managers out of the company. The result management can be best described as a bunch of cronies only interested in avoiding responsibility and sustaining the useless McDonnell-Douglass operations in St. Louis. The McDonnell-Douglas managers in St. Louis habitually attached their bogus special projects onto commercially viable Boeing-originated and managed revenue streams. Once attached, the MD staff would tax the profitable revenue streams and bombard the Boeing staff delivering the product with useless tools and managers without accountability for on-time delivery or profitability. The only things St. Louis was good at was avoiding accountability and responsibility. It was an incredibly frustrating experience. It would be nice if the organization was simplified and the reliance on St. Louis was significantly reduced.

0:08: ✈ The story of Airbus and its war with Boeing is a story of political competition between the United States and the European Union. 3:12: 🛫 The creation of Airbus was a result of political negotiation between European governments and aimed to compete with American aircraft manufacturers. 5:54: 💰 The trade dispute between the United States and the European Union, centered around Boeing and Airbus, was caused by Airbus receiving significant public funding, which some estimate to have a market impact of $200 billion. 9:03: 😕 The conflict between Airbus and Boeing arises from subsidies given to Airbus by European governments, which the Americans view as unfair competition. 12:49: 🚁 The US government has provided financial support to Boeing through military and aerospace contracts, while allegedly providing favorable treatment and laxity in certification. 15:09: 🛫 The trade war between Boeing and Airbus has harmed both companies and hindered the development of the aviation industry, creating an opportunity for China's COMAC. 17:56: 🛫 China's aggressive aircraft development and huge orders pose a threat to Boeing and Airbus in the key Chinese market. 20:51: ✈ The war for control of the skies and future predictions. Recap by Tammy AI with useful time sta

I worked as a software engineer at Boeing in Defense & Space (Tukwila and Kent) for 8 years, then 3 years in Commercial Aircraft in Everett, WA. In 2009/2010, I did the best work on my career in Kent, earning an across-the-board "exceeded expectations" review. At project conclusion, I got a 60 layoff warn anyway. Someone must have concluded this situation was too incongruous, and that's how I earned a transfer to my poor-fit position in Everett. My last manager in defense told me that he had communicated to H.R. that if he could get back anyone, it would be me. Very gratifying. My transfer bought me a layoff reprieve until 2013, at which point at least my pension was vested. But I remain bitter because it was not a business setback that ended my career at the company. Boeing moved key defense contracts from the Seattle area to Oklahoma City, and St. Louis. They no longer wanted to deal with SPEEA represented engineers, and they simply decided not to honor the benefits of accrued seniority of engineers such as myself. If you want to see a symbol of Boeing's decline, visit the site of the storied Kent Space Center in Kent, Washington. If I am correct, the lunar rover for the Apollo missions was made there. These days half the property has been sold off to Amazon for a warehouse, and half the buildings on the remaining Boeing property have been demolished with no apparent plans for redevelopment. Does this save on property tax? A building I worked in during 2009 is now an open field, the work for the project moved to Oklahoma.

I can’t respect a company that fixes a mechanical problem with a software “fix” to the flight controls.

The C Series/A220 story is the most poignant to me. Boeing desperate to protect its stale product, exploiting its corrupt relationship with the US Federal Government, and resulting in serving a ready to fly product to Airbus.

Among insiders and locals, Boeing is known by its nickname: "The Lazy B". The work ethic and spirit of innovation that defined the place pre-merger gave way to a lot of people not working very hard. There's still a LOT of fat that could be cut there, but upper level management is entirely self-serving.

And then, a few days after the launch of this video, Airbus got their largest order in history