Air France-KLM Unveils Tiny A220 Jet in Superjumbo's Shadow | Hacker News Reader

Air France-KLM Unveils Tiny A220 Jet in Superjumbo's Shadow

reuters.com

19 pointsinfodocket13 comments

For those out of the loop, the Airbus A220 is actually the Bombardier C-Series, the plane that posed such a threat to Boeing and it's 737 that they outright tried to kill Bombardier with shady regulatory practices to avoid having to compete with it.

Thankfully Airbus stepped in to save the day and took a majority partnership with Bombardier to save Bombardier's C-Series.

Here's an insightful post on the topic from an old HN discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20353890

What's puzzling is why Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get F-35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways).

No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for a flagship prestige technological project. Could you imagine the European Union just... giving up on Airbus? Or the American Government on Boeing?

I still don't understand why he reacted so submissively to Trump. Having the CSeries sold to Airbus at a huge discount was foolish: The plane already had a profitable order backlog.

Now Europeans are reaping the benefits.

Bombardier and its pension fund backer wanted a low-risk exit from the airliner business, especially to avoid continuing investment.

The irony is that the Canadian (and Quebec) government usually get flak for shoveling money and favours to Bombardier, not for refraining from doing it.

Getting out of the heavily subsidized airline industry is an unalloyed good, if Canada simply doesn't participate in the production and reaps the benefits of heavily subsidized international products the country wins.

So the country would rather buy finished products and finance foreign R&D than build them and have innovation happening at home?

Interesting vision.

If other countries want to subsidize export products take the free money and devote your resources to other things is, I think, an excellent vision.

Being romantic about particular industries is not a good vision I think.

Great, I love these small jets for shorter distances. So much more comfortable than a320 or b737 for whatever reason (probably because it's usually more expensive hence higher seat pitch)

Embraer 190 is my favorite short haul. As you indicated the seat pitch and airiness feels much more comfortable than a packed a320 or 737

Embraers are so much nicer for passengers in nearly every way than Bombardiers. I wonder what the advantage the other way is - there must be one?

I've flown both (but not the A220) and I felt the Bombardier was much smoother and quieter. Could have been the individual airplanes though.

My understanding is that the fuel efficiency was the feature that made them an attractive design for a race-to-the-bottom travel market.

Plus boarding is quicker.

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