First Japan-Built Airliner in 50 Years Takes on Boeing and Airbus
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
This is completly misleading on the Bombardier's part, they're not looking to sell off anything. Boeing got bitter after losing to them a deal with Delta Airlines so they asked and got a ridiculous tariff in place on the canadian plane for sales in the USA. Instead of accepting the loss of that market / selling off, Bombardier doubled down on that path and they made the "Avions C-Series" joint venture with Airbus (ownership 50.01 % Airbus, 30.99 % Bombardier Inc., 19 % Québec gov), where Airbus got half+ ownership for a symbolic euro and Bombardier got access to the Alabama plant so their sales to US customers would not be affected by tariffs (also, access to Airbus network for maintenance, training, ...).
The plane is now sold as the Airbus A220, which coupled with the A320 Neo is a no small part of the threat that made Boeing take so many shortcuts on the 737 Max so it could have the training advantage.
A newcomer is always great for competition, and a revival of Japan's ability in that area is great, but claiming they come in a field that their competitors is leaving is simply untrue, the A220 is more alive and dangerous as competition than Bombardier could have ever dreamt to be "alone"; and Airbus is now free to concentrate on other areas and let Bombardier does what it does best, instead of having to field their own plane at that range.
The only losing party was Boeing, which from where I stand is Karma (not saying Bombardier was not getting subsidies, but saying any of Boeing/Airbus/Embraer/Bombardier/... complaining about subsidies to the others is ridiculous, especially the two big ones who have their hands in military contracts)
The world of business sometimes reads like a novel.
There are numerous situations when paying nothing for something is entirely reasonable, for example when you are getting nothing (or even worse) in return (eg: bailout), or when you are giving something else in return (eg: future cooperation, access to new technology, access to a new market, etc.)
And in the other side of it, the deal will also majorly benefit Bombardier overall, obviously compared to no deal, but even long term compared with going on their own; Airbus is now pushing the plane hard like a normal part of their lineup, it doesn't compete with another Airbus plane since they didn't have one there yet (they were like Boeing except they snapped the Embraer one first). And the plane having access to the entire Airbus network is a big big plus (which is pretty much why it was instantly renamed A220, making it clear to customer it was a long term fully supported Airbus plane not a temporary off shot).
Even the Québec gov is happy since the deal protects all the jobs and manufacturing locations, only difference is final assembly done in Alabama, and only for US customers.
Also, Airbus was supposed to make their own and then compete directly with Bombardier too. Making two ennemies ally with each other is a really dumb move, and good luck taking it back once they both start reaping the benefits of that alliance.
Bombardier, Airbus, Boeing and the entire aerospace industry in every country exists primarily due to protectionism. Without canadian government support and market protection, bombardier could not exist. Without EU protection, Airbus cannot exist. Boeing or other aerospace companies would have underbid bombardier and airbus out of existence because they produced their own planes.
It's why China and Japan also use significant protectionism to protect their aerospace industry. They, like the US and EU, all "encourage" their own national carriers to buy from national manufacturers.
As others have noted, aerospace industry is inherently dual function just like satellite/GPS industry. They, by their innate nature, serve both the civilian and military industries.
I know we are told "protectionism" is bad from a young age, but the modern industrial world ( starting with the US ) was created by protection. Almost every industry in every industrial nation owes it's rise to protectionism. If you have the time, you should read up on the history of US protectionism in the 1800s, which set the example that every major economy from china to germany to japan to south korea followed to become major economic players.
Without protectionism, we don't have Airbus, Bombardier, etc. Without protectionism, we also don't have Samsung, Toyota, Sony, Volkswagen, etc. Without protectionism, every industry in the US would have been bought up or controlled by the wealthier british industrialists.
The first act of Congress was an act of protectionism - a tariff.
No they didn't. No new plant, no new hires, no more planes built at that plant than before. They will displace planned production at that plant to make room for the specific planes requesting by US customers, and the plane originally meant to be built there will be made in another non US plant.
The ONLY thing that changes for the US is negative in that Boeing's competitors are now stronger and allied together against Boeing.
If protectionism was so good for the competitor, Boeing and the US government wouldn't be attacking the EU and their subsidies and protectionism of Airbus.
If protectionism is so bad for Boeing, why have the Boeing execs lobbied the US government for more protectionism? If protectionism is so bad, why has bombardier lobbied canada and quebec for protectionism for decades? If protectionism is so bad, why has airbus lobbied for protectionism from the EU even before they became operational? Airbus was born with protectionism and subsidies that is the envy of the world.
I'm not entirely for or against protectionism, but the blanket ideology that protectionism is bad is historically incorrect. Ask Boeing, ask Airbus, ask Bombardier.
If Airbus starts demanding more tariffs, subsidies and protectionism for Boeing in the US, then I'll start to believe what you say. If Boeing demands that EU give Airbus even more subsidies and greater market protection it the EU, then I'll start to believe what you say.
War is good, b/c after the first strike everything is ok for the attacker.
You forget that there is always some kind of reaction. Protectionism always works in the short run. We'll see how protectionist US looks in 10y. Then you can argue depending on results it works.
Most people view trade in general as a mutually beneficial endeavor.
As I pointed out before, some of the top trading nations are the US, China, Japan, Germany and South Korea. All of them have significant amount of protectionist policies. All of them also have significant amount of trade.
It's a false dichotomoy to claim you can have trade or you can have protectionism. You can have both.
But besides, you’re not even mentioning the customers, who always loose out because their natural choice of product is artificially influenced.
And Airbus didn't even take on the huge debts the programme has accrued. They get none of the pain of the development and half the profit from sales. (Also I believe Airbus's network for sales was also considered significant by Bombardier; they may lose a fair bit of the profit from sales, but I think Bombardier were hoping Airbus's networks would increase sales sufficiently that it'd be a net gain for them.)
Absolutely, there is a reason why it got renamed to A220 instantly. In passenger planes Airbus/Boeing is like the "nobody got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft" of the IT world.
Also, their potential customers are much more likely to already have Airbus planes, so with that change you don't need another suppliers for parts and maintenance etc ... It's the same vendor.
The A220 competes with the ERJ-175/190 series. An A319 carries slightly more passengers than the largest A220, and the smallest 737NG carries 30-50 more passengers.
Boeing has never competed in the small regional jet market, and their recent attempt at a partnership with Embraer is their response to the A220.
Their ending of production is another indication that they aren't interested in the market.
Sounds like a great deal to me.
(edit for clarity- Clearly they got a lot in the server hacking piece wrong, but in the situation it seems like they were intentionally misled, and were really not expecting so many of their "sources" to be basically repeaters of the same falsehoods)
BUT, most of their articles seem like extremely low quality drivel. They fail to get basic facts or ideas about the situation correct, and/or they sound like someone shit out a 1-sentence long opinion and then expanded it into a page or 2. I haven't been flagging these and don't think most do, but maybe we should start.
EDIT: after some research digging through the related thread on airliners.net [1], this is what I found:
"After 7.5 years (which is pretty fast), Airbus has a call option for all of BBD's shares in the joint venture at the then current market value (and BBD has a put option similarly, which it would exercise if things didn't work out). So basically, Airbus can buy the whole shebang in 7.5 years."
Since the announce was made in October 2016, in 6 years Airbus can trigger its option to acquire Bombardier's shares. Not completely sure about Québec's shares though.
[1] https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1376389&...
Airbus > Mitsubishi > Boeing > Bombardier
Airbus - Gained a brand new aircraft for close to nothing, allowing it to sell at a discount that Boeing may not be able to do. Can wait to make key strategic sales for after they purchase Bombardier's 30.99% stake.
Mitsubishi - Learned what to do and not to do from the Bombardier saga. Also learned that there is a potential market for a third competitor.
Boeing - Staved off a potential third competitor which could dilute the profitability of the segment. Didn't want to make the same mistake when it didn't consider the Airbus could become the giant it is today decades ago. (As of today, lost 15% stock from its previous peak, although it may be due to a variety of other problems, including the China/US trade spat)
Bombardier - Was forced to sell off its new jet for close to nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_Dash_8#Sale_to_Long...
This section on Wikipedia gives a succinct overview of the multiple financial issues Bombardier has faced with the C Series.
Bombardier put a lot of time and money into the development, and then way more money and way more time. And Quebec is clearly, lets say, highly interested in making sure that planes are built, and that some of them are made in Quebec.
Japan has made baby steps to have more sovereignty in it's foreign policy and it just makes sense that they are slowly increasing the relative independency of their strategic industries as well.
Just seems a bit Quixotic. Especially for a country with much larger issues to worry about. If your country is dying, you'd think you would be rolling out high tech, or innovative solutions to that problem first.
Well, I guess "alarm" isn't the right word, since everyone knows that it's happening already. But you would think there would be more concern about it?
That is already happening in most western nations.
Sweden shut down its immigration flood as one prominent example. It was a policy mistake that will not benefit their nation at all and they aggressively reversed course. Denmark has mostly followed Sweden in restricting its briefly loose immigration policies, because the results have been very poor.
Australia has implemented an extremely strict immigration system that locks almost everyone out unless you meet their merit requirements.
Canada has had a strict merit system in place for a long time. They have no plans to change that, because they know the damage it would do to their very nice welfare state.
Norway and Finland never relaxed their immigration policies in the first place.
Merkel's immigration flood exploded in her face with massive backlash politically. Germany was forced to turn back against that approach as it was politically untenable.
France has seen zero economic benefit from its loose immigration policies over the last two decades. When I say zero, I mean their immigrants have high unemployment and low education levels, the economy has not expanded at all, productivity is not expanding, GDP per capita has not expanded, and median wages have not expanded. They thought it would bolster their economy, it did the exact opposite, it's now a massive drag on each person in France that has to support the high immigrant unemployment rate.
Next will be the US, which will entirely turn against allowing mass low skill immigration. The US has dramatically expanded its welfare state over the last 30 and 50 years. The US now spends as much on its welfare state per capita as Canada. You can't combine increasingly shifting to a very expensive welfare state system with unfettered low skill immigration that can't pay its own way (and in fact does the opposite, it drowns the system). Bernie Sanders, to use one prominent example, understands how this combination has to work economically. It's why Finland only has 5 million people and isn't in a big hurry to get to 10 million (they could open the gates tomorrow and allow in millions of people; it's clear why they don't do it). You can have sustainable immigration in an expensive welfare state only if it pays for itself. All the best nations - highest standards of living - on earth follow this model for obvious reasons.
Will it? The policy class shows no signs of this.
Sweden had the third-highest migration count ever in 2018, with ~137.000 people migrating to the country. The second-highest was 2017 (~144.000), the highest 2016 (~163.000). Source: SCB (Statistiska Centralbyrån -> 'Central Bureau for Statistics') report [1]. No borders were closed, not for real. In 2018 Migrationsverket ('Migration authority', responsible for handling migration) expected over half a million people (~5% of the current population) to come to Sweden in the coming 5 years.
Half of the women giving birth in Sweden are now wholly or partly of foreign descent, 35% partly or wholly of non-western descent, this also according to a recent SCB report.
[1] https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/mannisk...
It shows a clear decline in recent years, though overall immigration may not be affected.
Net immigration numbers jump around year by year, but have been between 170K and 250K/year for over 10 years (with the exception of 2008/9 when they increased to 300K for one year)[1]
There's been no change in policy affecting these numbers.
There have been changes in the rules affecting asylum seekers arriving by boat. In terms of numbers these aren't really significant (during the most extreme years it was around 10,000).
Separately, Australia takes in ~13,000 refugees per year who do not arrive by boat.[2]
[1] https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3412...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_in_Australia#Mandatory_...
you brought facts to a talking-points fight
Ideally you want your population to contract, while you increase per capita well-being through productivity gains. Each person gains, while the society eases up on the pressure it exerts via resource demands. There are few exceptions, perhaps countries like Estonia which are already tiny and still contracting (where a stable population might be preferable).
Adding people is one of the worst things most nations can be doing at this moment in history. Overall economic growth (almost always the argument used to push for expanding population at any cost) is not inherently valuable, it's the per capita growth that is the best measure. You want greater output per capita and to accomplish it using fewer resources.
Just ask France and the UK. They've added 10 million people to their collective population since 2006. They've produced zero per capita economic growth in all that time. Their citizens are wildly unhappy about what's going on as one would expect. The elites have done well, while most people have seen their wages and standards of living stagnate for decades. That path isn't going to sustain much longer given the current climate. It's going to require a refocusing on per capita well-being, instead of trying to grow the overall economy at any cost. Most developed nations, including the US, are in the same boat.
One example would be eyes in mammals and eyes in cephalopods: they are extremely similar safe for some details (the location of the blind spot is different, but it's there) even though both groups are hundreds of million of years apart!
But for most people when they look at a plane it's either from the front or the back. Boeing planes have a sharp tapered nose. Airbus have rounder nose with a steep incline at the cockpit window. To me, one looks like a shark and the other a dolphin.
It get's complicated for the smaller, regional fleets. I know an ATR when I see it but I would have some difficulty differentiating an Embraer from a CRJ or 707.
Wingtips alone will give away Airbus vs Boeing on all current in-production models.
Current economics are based on the notion that fuel is expensive and therefore you try to fly huge planes with lots of people because it delivers better fuel economy. This completely dominates everything in the aviation industry currently from design, logistics, to operations. The economies are such that you only fly routes where you can fill all the seats and still pay for the fuel. With electric your energy cost is a much less significant. Your main cost shift to infrastructure, cost, maintenance, etc. of the plane. If electric cars are an indication, you can expect some reduced cost there as well.
So, suddenly, flying short hops with small air planes becomes cheap and feasible. So, why fly short hops with a few huge planes that cost tens of millions and burn tons of fuel when you can fly the same route with many smaller planes that you charge using solar/wind/etc. for a fraction of the cost? Changes the game completely. E.g. London-Amsterdam could be dozens/hundreds of 6-12 seater electrical planes instead of a handful of airbuses flying back and forth. Also, London City suddenly becomes more attractive because small electric planes are not so noisy.
Basically on board staff becomes the limiting factor, not fuel cost. Now add autonomous flying to the mix and you solve that as well.
As long as they don't all need 2 pilots. I'd really like to see self-driving planes, must be easier than self-driving cars surely? (And, yes, I would fly in one)
The issue I think is that airplane autopilots rely significantly on sensors which occasionally fail. That means self-flying planes must be able to cope with sensor failures which generally means falling back to visual cues. Self-driving cars that rely just on cameras (rather than LIDAR) are a point of debate regarding their feasibility. Planes that would have to rely on just cameras likely have the same issues.
A plane has to find a way of landing safely first. I am not versed enough in aeronautics to even begin to understand how hard it is to reach human-level in mayday situations.
I wouldn't, if it was made by Boeing. Just look at how badly they fucked up something as simple as their MCAS system, making it only use input from a single sensor. That kind of incompetence isn't going to yield a safe plane that flies by itself.
There are many smaller airports in and around London that you can go to with a smaller plane and quite a few that are more convenient to get to from inside the city. If noise and pollution stop being concerns, many of those would be able to absorb the traffic and building more would be a lot less controversial.
If air traffic scales down to flights 1/10 the size of today, 10 times as many takeoffs and landings are needed to move the same number of people.
I don't think we have any way to get 10x the airport capacity?
Problems with lots of small planes:
* They fly like a roller-coaster (4 seaters are crazy scary for many people).
* More crashes - bad "optics"
* Number of pilots required
They do have the potential to have more direct routes, and very short hops, with less security overheads. Maybe run more regularly, but not much of an advantage because most people want to travel at particular times of the day (same problem with buses).
For example I was hoping that electric cars would lead to a reevaluation of the basic design of a car and we would see something new but instead electric cars look pretty much like cars with a gas engine.
What were you hoping for? There's only so much you can do with the basic design of a car. It needs to have crumple zones in the front and rear for safety (really old cars with radically different designs didn't have this, but they weren't safe in a crash), and a car that can't seat 4 generally won't sell, so you're not going to get anything that looks substantially different from today's cars.
https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/northrop-once-built-planes-t...
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/greener_air...
http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/civil/flying_wings1.htm
Or if you believe these nerds, a sort of flint axe with little weedy wings:
http://oddjob.utias.utoronto.ca/~dwz/Miscellaneous/ReistZing...
SpaceX hopes to eventually provide business-class and other Earth2Earth service with its BFR/Starship/SuperHeavy, a two-stage (1st returns to launch site) stainless-steel rocket. The design is still in flux, and may or may not end up with enough wings to be somewhat "aircraft"-ish... rather than just a belly-flopping skydiving spacecraft with a bit of body lift and wing-like control surfaces. But it's certainly visually distinctive.
Mitsubishi Heavy built the wings for the 787. Boeing, in a rare moment of stupidity, outsourced the manufacturing of the wings (the internal policy has historically been "The wings are the plane" so outsource anything BUT the wings and we are cool).
So about the time the first 787 prototype rolls off the lines, Mitsubishi announces their Regional Jet.
He was calm about this every time I brought him an article about them making progress. It's a Bombardier class plane, it doesn't really compete with Boeing. And they need a lot of commuter jets in SE Asia so they'll sell a lot of them, sure, but it's gonna be a while before they build a plane three times as big.
And as it turns out, it took them a very long time just to build their first plane. Now, I don't believe the Japanese "school of business" is fond of people bungling a project and having no idea how to avoid all the problems the next time, so we could get surprised by a much faster turnaround on the next one. But they're still way behind schedule.
Is it really "Boeing" anymore or more MD?
One hypothesis around the 787 problems I heard was that post-acquisition, all the MD people ended up in important positions (reverse take-over a la Apple and NeXT)
So when the Dreamliner program came a long it was developed under MD's more business-y thinking (outsource risk) instead of Boeing's engineering thinking (learn in-house). Then they had to put together a ten thousand piece jigsaw from hundreds of suppliers with varying tolerances.
I believe it was also said after the fact that the process for the 787 was a huge mistake and they'd never build a plane like that again.
Silver lining I suppose.
MD was/is a defense contractor first and foremost and the most important thing about defense aerospace is spreading the grift over as many congressional districts as possible. This makes total sense when your clients are 100% political. It makes zero sense otherwise.
Notice SpaceX can build big rockets on the cheap and keep a schedule? Yeah because they do everything in one place unlike NaSA and it's contractors that have to spread everything all over.
They cannot. Your statement is actually kinda funny, since "elon time" is its own meme and ULA uses "Schedule Certainty" as one of the main talking points to distinguish themselves from SpaceX (see [0] as an example of the ULA CEO doing exactly that on the SpaceX subreddit)
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/aqbnza/spacex_prote...
You mean compared to NaSA and it's aerospace contractors? Cause that's what matters.
Of course, the move to secure order places may simply be a strategic move to trade those spots on the order book for more flying should one of the legacy airlines choose to order the MRJ for themselves. It’s interesting how the chess pieces move and fun to watch!
TLDR; Don’t expect to see this aircraft flying under the colors of any of the legacy airlines in the US until you see them ordered by the legacy airlines themselves.
Without the scope issue being solved these aircraft are dead in the water when it comes to the US. Obviously the US market isn’t the only market but it is certainly the largest and without it a manufacturer cannot expect to be a real threat to Boeing or Airbus.
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2018-1...
The engine isn't the only bit that affects fuel efficiency, but it is a big part.
Although aircraft are designed for specific engines, it’s up to the customer to execute a separate purchase agreement for them.
Covered in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_clause
Part of the reason news websites have to resort to all of the advertising and trackers is because everyone expects to get their news for free now.